What Christmas is as we grow older, and other stories

Sbe

Christmas IRumbers
of

"E>ouseboU> Morfcs"

1851

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS
WE GROW OLDER

AND OTHER STORIES

\

I

WHAT
CHRISTMAS

IS AS
WE GROW

OLDER

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS
AS WE GROW OLDER

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

CHARLES DICKENS
EDMUND OLLIER
HARRIET MARTINEAU
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA
ELIZA GRIFFITHS
SAMUEL SIDNEY
T. W. A. BUCKLEY

AND

R. H. HORNE

With a Frontispiece by Dudley Gunston

LONDON

CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD.

pN

RICHARD CI.AY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, B.C., AND

BUNGAV, SUFFOLK.

CONTENTS

PAGE

WHAT CHRISTMAS Is AS WE GROW OLDER,

by Charles Dickens i

WHAT CHRISTMAS Is TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE,

by R. H. Home 9

AN IDYL FOR CHRISTMAS IN-DOORS, by

Edmund Oilier 29

WHAT CHRISTMAS Is IN COUNTRY PLACES,

by Harriet Martineau . . . '34
WHAT CHRISTMAS Is IN THE COMPANY OF

JOHN DOE, by George Augustus Sala . 49
THE ORPHAN'S DREAM OF CHRISTMAS, by

Eliza Griffiths 68

WHAT CHRISTMAS Is AFTER A LONG ABSENCE,

by Samuel Sidney . . . -74

WHAT CHRISTMAS Is IF You OUTGROW IT,

by T. W. A. Buckley ... 90

THE ROUND GAME OF THE CHRISTMAS

BOWL, by R. H. Home . . .104

What Christmas Is as We
Grow Older

BY CHARLES DICKENS

TIME was, with most of us, when Christ-
mas Day encircling all our limited World like
a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss
or seek ; bound together all our home enjoy-
ments, affections, and hopes ; grouped every
thing and every one around the Christmas
fire ; and made the little picture shining in
our bright young eyes, complete.

Time came, perhaps, all so soon ! when our
thoughts overleaped that narrow boundary ;
when there was some one (very dear, we
thought then, very beautiful, and absolutely
perfect) wanting to the fulness of our happi-
ness ; when we were wanting too (or we
thought so, which did just as well) at the
Christmas hearth by which that some one sat ;
and when we intertwined with every wreath
and garland of our life that some one's name.

That was the time for the bright visionary
Christmases which have long arisen from us

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

to show faintly, after summer rain, in the
palest edges of the rainbow ! That was the
time for the beatified enjoyment of the things
that were to be, and never were, and yet the
things that were so real in our resolute hope
that it would be hard to say, now, what
realities achieved since, have been stronger !

What ! Did that Christmas never really
come when we and the priceless pearl who
was our young choice were received, after the
happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the
two united families previously at daggers-drawn
on our account ? When brothers and sisters
in law who had always been rather cool to us
before our relationship was effected, perfectly
doted on us, and when fathers and mothers
overwhelmed us with unlimited incomes ?
Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten,
after which we arose, and generously and
eloquently rendered honour to our late rival,
present in the company, then and there ex-
changing friendship and forgiveness, and found-
ing an attachment, not to be surpassed in
Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until
death ? Has that same rival long ceased to
care for that same priceless pearl, and married
for money, and become usurious ? Above all,
do we really know, now, that we should
probably have been miserable if we had won
and worn the pearl, and that we are better
without her ?

AS WE GROW OLDER

That Christmas when we had recently
achieved so much fame ; when we had been
carried in triumph somewhere, for doing
something great and good ; when we had won
an honoured and ennobled name, and arrived
and were received at home in a shower of
tears of joy ; is it possible that that Christmas
has not come yet ?

And is our life here, at the best, so con-
stituted that, pausing as we advance at such
a noticeable mile-stone in the track as this
great birthday, we look back on the things
that never were, as naturally and full as
gravely as on the things that have been and
are gone, or have been and still are ? If it be
so, and so it seems to be, must we come to
the conclusion, that life is little better than a
dream, and little worth the loves and strivings
that we crowd into it ?

No ! Far be such miscalled philosophy from
us, dear reader, on Christmas Day ! Nearer
and closer to our hearts be the Christmas
spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness,
perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty,
kindness, and forbearance ! It is in the last
virtues especially, that we are, or should be,
strengthened by the unaccomplished visions
of our youth ; for, who shall say that they are
not our teachers to deal gently even with the
impalpable nothings of the earth !

Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

thankful that the circle of our Christmas
associations and of the lessons that they bring,
expands ! Let us welcome every one of them,
and summon them to take their places by the
Christmas hearth.

Welcome, old aspirations, glittering crea-
tures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter
underneath the holly ! We know you, and
have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old
projects and old loves, however fleeting, to
your nooks among the steadier lights that burn
around us. Welcome, all that was ever real
to our hearts ; and for the earnestness that
made you real, thanks to Heaven ! Do we
build no Christmas castles in the clouds now ?
Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies
among these flowers of children, bear witness !
Before this boy, there stretches out a Future,
brighter than we ever looked on in our old
romantic time, but bright with honour and
with truth. Around this little head on which
the sunny curls lie heaped, the graces sport,
as prettily, as airily, as when there was no
scythe within the reach of Time to shear
away the curls of our first-love. Upon
another girl's face near it — placider but
smiling bright — a quiet and contented little
face, we see Home fairly written. Shining
from the word, as rays shine from a star,
we see how, when our graves are old, other
hopes than ours are young, other hearts

AS WE GROW OLDER

than ours are moved ; how other ways are
smoothed ; how other happiness blooms,
ripens, and decays — no, not decays, for other
homes and other bands of children, not yet in
being nor for ages yet to be, arise, and bloom
and ripen to the end of all !

Welcome, everything ! Welcome, alike what
has been, and what never was, and what we
hope may be, to your shelter underneath the
holly, to your places round the Christmas
fire, where what is sits open-hearted ! In
yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively
upon the blaze, an enemy's face ? By Christ-
mas Day we do forgive him ! If the injury he
has done us may admit of such companion-
ship, let him come here and take his place.
If, otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence,
assured that he will never injure nor accuse
him.

On this day, we shut out Nothing !

" Pause," says a low voice. " Nothing ?
Think !"

" On Christmas Day, we will shut out from
our fireside, Nothing."

" Not the shadow of a vast City where the
withered leaves are lying deep?" the voice
replies. " Not the shadow that darkens the
whole globe ? Not the shadow of the City
of the Dead?"

Not even that. Of all days in the year,
we will turn our faces towards that City upon

5

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring
those we loved, among us. City of the Dead,
in the blessed name wherein we are gathered
together at this time, and in the Presence that
is here among us according to the promise,
we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people
who are dear to us !

Yes. We can look upon these children
angels that alight, so solemnly, so beautifully,
among the living children by the fire, and
can bear to think how they departed from us.
Entertaining angels unawares, as the Patri-
archs did, the playful children are unconscious
of their guests ; but we can see them — can
see a radiant arm around one favourite neck,
as if there were a tempting of that child
away. Among the celestial figures there is
one, a poor mis-shapen boy on earth, of a
glorious beauty now, of whom his dying
mother said it grieved her much to leave him
here, alone, for so many years as it was likely
would elapse before he came to her — being
such a little child. But he went quickly, and
was laid upon her breast, and in her hand she
leads him.

There was a gallant boy, who fell, far
away, upon a burning sand beneath a burning
sun, and said, " Tell them at home, with my
last love, how much I could have wished to
kiss them once, but that I died contented and
had done my duty ! " Or there was another,
6

AS WE GROW OLDER

over whom they read the words, " Therefore
we commit his body to the deep ! " and so
consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed
on. Or there was another who lay down to
his rest in the dark shadow of great forests,
and, on earth, awoke no more. O shall they
not, from sand and sea and forest, be brought
home at such a time !

There was a dear girl — almost a woman —
never to be one — who made a mourning
Christmas in a house of joy, and went her
trackless way to the silent City. Do we re-
collect her, worn out, faintly whispering what
could not be heard, and falling into that last
sleep for weariness ? O look upon her now !
O look upon her beauty, her serenity, her
changeless youth, her happiness ! Thedaughter
of Jairus was recalled to life, to die ; but she,
more blest, has heard the same voice, saying
unto her, " Arise for ever ! "

We had a friend who was our friend from
early days, with whom we often pictured the
changes that were to come upon our lives,
and merrily imagined how we would speak,
and walk, and think, and talk, when we came
to be old. His destined habitation in the City
of the Dead received him in his prime. Shall
he be shut out from our Christmas remem-
brance ? Would his love have so excluded
us ? Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister,
brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard

CHRISTMAS AS WE GROW OLDER

you ! You shall hold your cherished places in
our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas
fires ; and in the season of immortal hope,
and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we
will shut out Nothing !

The winter sun goes down over town and
village ; on the sea it makes a rosy path,
as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the
water. A few more moments, and it sinks,
and night comes on, and lights begin to
sparkle in the prospect. On the hill-side
beyond the shapelessly-difrused town, and in
the quiet keeping of the trees that gird the
village-steeple, remembrances are cut in stone,
planted in common flowers, growing in grass,
entwined with lowly brambles around many
a mound of earth. In town and village, there
are doors and windows closed against the
weather, there are flaming logs heaped high,
there are joyful faces, there is healthy music
of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm
excluded from the temples of the Household
Gods, but be those remembrances admitted
with tender encouragement ! They are of
the time and all its comforting and peaceful
reassurances ; and of the history that re-
united even upon earth the living and the
dead ; and of the broad beneficence and good-
ness that too many men have tried to tear to
narrow shreds.

8

What Christmas Is to a
Bunch of People

BY R. H. HORNE

THE FATHER OF A FAMILY rubs his hands
with a genial smile when Christmas comes ;
and yet he now and then raises one finger to
the calculating " organ " of his cranium with
rather a thoughtful air, suggestive of certain
bills and taxes, which he is resolved shall not
weigh upon his mind. Why should they ?
He will get through his Christmas bills some-
how or other, as he has done before. He has
no doubt of being able to muster the money
to " article " his eldest son to a highly respect-
able solicitor ; he has already laid up a small
portion for his eldest daughter, and makes
pretty sure of doing as much for the others by
the time they are old enough to be married.
He has a good business ; his wife is a clever
manager j they live happily together ; the
holly-berries smile at him with the well-
remembered sparkle of early days ; he there-
fore determines to enjoy the merry season as

9

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

of old. What if he does see half-a-dozen more
grey hairs displaying themselves, as though to
remind him that another year has passed, and
a certain line or two in his face does look a
trifle deeper than when he had last observed
it ? What have such small matters to do
with the real age of a man ? A man is as
old as he feels, and no more. The fact is,
the Father of a Family is as young as he was
twenty years ago ; so he gives his hair an
additional and rather flourishing touch with a
comb, puts on a new waistcoat, brushes the
collar of his coat, and, looking down with
complacency on his boots as he sets his hat
lightly upon his head, sallies out upon the
landing-place, and shouts a jaunty inquiry as
to when his wife and daughter will be ready
to go to church. The boys are gone on before.
Meanwhile he stands thrumming a pleased,
but impatient, tattoo with his fingers upon the
banisters, and inhaling every now and then a
savoury whiff of sweet herbs rising up from
the kitchen.

THE MOTHER OF A FAMILY has a world of
anxious thoughts about her. She likes Christ-
mas ; it is, no doubt, a pleasant time ; there
are many sweet memories and hopes attending
it, and altogether it must be considered as
happy : but the butcher's bill, she knows,
must be heavy — the baker's too — and as for
the grocer's, she is almost afraid to think of it.
10

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

Besides this, there is a new dress-maker's bill,
which she has not yet told Mr. Broadback
about. But how was all this to be avoided ?
As to herself, she could not do with less, nor
her eldest daughter, especially on the eve of
her marriage — a happy marriage she most
devoutly hopes it will be. Then there aje the
growing girls, all of whose dresses have got
so shockingly short, that she could almost
wish the follies of Bloomerism had been
softened and translated, and entered England
under another character — as a Persian, Turkish,
or Polish ladies' "fashions," just imported
from Paris — so that something economically
elegant might have gradually been introduced,
inch by inch, as it were, to the great saving of
the Mothers of large families of daughters.
As for the bonnet-maker, she must wait. It
is unknown what sums have been paid that
bonnet-maker in the course of the last six
years. Perhaps it would be best not to think
any more of these matters just at present.
At any rate, Mr. Broadback shall have a good
Christmas dinner ; she will take care of that ;
and all their relations and friends who are
invited shall be made as happy as possible.

THE ELDEST SON has a mixed feeling
about Christmas. He has no very romantic
impressions of the study of the Law ; but he
wishes to begin life, and to take the first step
towards making his way in the world ; and as
ii

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

he is to be articled to Mr. Benjamin Sheep-
skin early in January, he looks upon the
intermediate time rather impatiently. At
least he would do so, but that his cousin Ellen
is to dine with them on Christmas Day, and
stay on a visit for a week afterwards, during
which there will be round games and forfeits,
and he will "go partners" with his cousin,
and dance with her, and show her all his law-
books, and decoy her under the mistletoe-
bough ; and so he expects to pass a very
merry time before he goes to the office of Mr.
Sheepskin.

What Christmas is to THE ELDEST
DAUGHTER, we may pretty well infer from
the increased brightness in her eyes, the
frequent blush that suffuses her soft cheeks,
the occasional pensive air suddenly awakening
up with a smile, the tender sigh, and the
additional pains she takes with her beautiful
hair, which is never out of order, and yet she
thinks it continually needs to be brushed and
smoothed, and set to rights. To her, Christ-
mas evidently comes with a wedding-ring con-
cealed in a wreath of evergreen.

Besides the eldest son, there are "THE
BOYS ; " and these rollicking young chaps are
home for the holidays ; and Christmas to them
is (weather permitting) an endless succession
of sliding and snow-balls, and hoops, and
going on the ice ; and plum-puddings, and

12

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

mince-pies, and games at blind-man's-buff,
and other romps in the evening, with snap-
dragon after supper.

To THE YOUNGEST CHILD — a little bright-
eyed fairy of five years old, in a white and
sky-blue frock, purple sash, and red shoes —
Christmas is a season of romance. It is a
whirl of shining hours, in which there are
new toys of mysterious beauty, and dances,
and kisses, and cakes of all sorts, and sweet-
meats, and wonderful things made of painted
sugar, and all the creatures of the earth, with
Noah's Ark in the middle, and brothers and
sisters, and playmates, the eldest of whom is
not yet " gone eight " — spoken of, like a little
clock ! — and Mamma in a new dress, shining
with bracelets, and a chain and things ; and
dear Auntie with a busy face making some-
thing nice to eat ; and loud shouting and
crowding round a Christmas tree, all of green
and gold, with lights ; and glittering presents
of priceless value dangling from every twig,
and hidden in deep green recesses of the
boughs. This is the true Fairy-land we have
all read so much about !

But THE MAIDEN AUNT, she who so con-
tinually sits on one side, out of the way, or in
the quiet shade of a corner — she who is so
continually forgotten, except when some kind
assistance is needed — shall we, too, forget her ?
Far from it. We well know what Christmas

13

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

is to her. All her life is devoted to amiable
disinterested acts of practical aid to all in the
house who need it ; and the period of Christ-
mas, to her, is the summing up of a year's
account of sympathies and kindly offices, of
which she herself takes no note beyond the
moment, and which have no place in her
memory except to cause a sigh of regret when
any gentle service has not effected all the good
she intended.

What Christmas is to THE OLD HOUSE-
KEEPER of a substantial family, more wealthy
than the one just described, we must all see
at once to be a very serious business indeed ; —
complicated, and full of grave cares, packages
of hope, close-covered preparations, and spicy
responsibilities. There she stands, with her
tortoise-shell spectacles, and a great bunch of
keys dangling over her white apron ! No
minister of State thinks more of herself
(Heaven forgive us ! — himself) than this old
lady does. Her " linen closet " is a model of
neatness and order ; her " china closet " is set
out with the utmost precision, and not without
an eye to effect in the prominent display on
the highest shelves of the choice old china-
bowls, basins, tea-cups, saucers, and an im-
mensely ancient tea-pot of the ugliest shape
imaginable, and covered with very ugly faded
paintings, of great value. But most of all is
her pride and importance in the house, and in

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

her own self-esteem, displayed when she un-
locks and opens the door of her " store-room."
No one must enter but the Housekeeper her-
self. You may stand outside, and lean round
the sides of the open door, and peep in — but
no more. There, you see large tea-canisters
of different sizes — and coffee-canisters — and
dark slate-blue paper bags — and polished
wooden spice-boxes, tall, and round, and un-
screwing in several places — and boxes of
raisins, and a fig-drum, and many packets of
different sizes, with a large white cone of loaf-
sugar standing in the midst — (we think the
Youngest Child of this family really must be
allowed to come in, and look about, but not
touch anything) — and light bundles of dry
herbs hanging from nails, and small baskets
attached to hooks, and half a German sausage,
besides three Bath chaps swinging by short
strings from nails on the edge of the top shelf ;
while, ranged along the shelves, the Child sees
a beautiful array of white jam-pots and preserve-
pots, and brown pickle-jars, and wide-necked
glass bottles full of deep-coloured cherries, and
preserved gooseberries, plums, apricots, and
other fruits — with honey-jars, and tamarind-
jars ; and beneath each shelf, a range of drawers
with brass handles, labelled outside with the
names of all the nicest, and some of the most
mysterious, things, in the eatable world.

What this period of the year is to THE

15

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

GARDENER, we may easily guess, from great
armfuls of mistletoe-boughs, of holly-boughs
thick with berries, and of branches of laurel
which he is continually carrying into the
house, or going with as a present to neigh-
bouring houses. And now, see him coming
along with a bending back, bearing an entire
fir-tree, which gracefully nods its head as he
slowly trudges along, and shakes and rustles
all its dry brown cones, as if in dumb anti-
cipation of the peals of bells that will shortly
be rung ! This fir is for the Christmas Tree
— the green and simple foundation and super-
structure, which is shortly destined to sustain
so much brightness and romance, so many
glittering presents, and to be the medium of
so many sweet feelings, joyous hopes, and
tender sense of childhood — in present bright
visions around us, and in tender recollections
of the past.

As for THE NURSE, there can be no doubt
but Christmas is a very anxious time for her.
She expects so many of the young folks will
make themselves very ill with all this quantity
of plum-pudding, and plum-cake, and mince-
pies. However, she consoles herself, on the
whole, for any extra trouble she may have in
pouring out, or mixing and stirring wine-
glasses of physic, and trying to conceal
powders in honey or red-currant jelly (and
then getting them down /) by the proud
16

,

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

recollection that she had the lady of the house
in her arms when a child ; and this conscious-
ness makes her feel of the highest importance
in the family.

But THE DOCTOR — the medical attendant
of the family — there are no mixed feelings or
misgivings in his mind. He hears of all the
preparations — all the nice things — and shakes
his head gravely at the lady of the house ; but
the instant he is outside the door, he hurries
homeward, rubbing his knuckles. He knows !

The black coat of THE VICAR has a richer
and more prominent tone of black, as he walks
across the broad snow of his seven-acre field,
towards the stile that leads into the lane that
runs to the vestry-door of the church. The
snow-covered hedges, with frosted twigs at top,
nod and glisten to him as he moves briskly
onward, pointing his Church-and-stately black
toe along the narrow path, beside the deep
cart-rut, with its rough and jagged ridges.
Christmas to him is a series of dinners, and
" offerings," and good things, and compliments,
and wedding fees, and burial fees, and christen-
ing fees, and charity sermons, exhorting the
rich to remember the poor, and exhorting the
poor to be meek and contented, and trust to
Providence. Meantime, THE CURATE goes
to tea-parties, and has a great deal to do in
the details of Church business affairs, as the
vestries are often very troublesome ; and has
17 c

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

much to do in visiting the sick, and administering
religious consolation, and riding on horseback
to do double duty — morning service, here —
afternoon, there — evening service, here again,
or somewhere else. This is the ordinary,
regular, hard-working, useful Curate ; but if
he be a spruce young Puseyite Curate, in a
black silk sacerdotal dress-waistcoat, with a
narrow, stiff white neck-tie, and a black super-
fine frock-coat, cut to the quick — then, he
very often rivals the Vicar in his dinner-
parties, and gives him the " go-by " in evening-
parties, where he clean carries off most of the
young ladies for a little intense talk of divine
things, in one corner of the room.

If Christmas be a great fact to THE
BEADLE, the Beadle seems a greater fact to
Christmas. New broad-cloth — new scarlet
and gold — new gold-laced cocked hat, of old
Lord Mayor fashion — new gold-headed cane —
no wonder that all the little charity boys eye
his inflated presence with additional awe ! No
wonder that it is inflated, for he is swollen
with the substantial comforts derived from
all the great kitchens in the neighbourhood.
There is a roasted ox in his mind. He can
never forget the year when one was roasted
whole upon the ice, and he present, and
allowed to take his turn with the basting-
ladle. It was the epic event of his life.

The Beadle is generally able to frown the
18

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

charity boys into awe and silence ; assisting
the said frown, every now and then, with a
few cuts of a long yellow twining cane,
during service ; whereby, amidst the sonorous
tones of the preacher, there often breaks out a
squealing cry from the hollow and remote
aisles, or distant rows of heads in the organ
loft, to the great injury of the eloquence of the
pastor, and the gravity of the junior portion of
his congregation.

But though this parish Terror of the Poor
has portentous frowns for most of those under
his dominion, he knows how to patronise with
a smile, and his rubicund beams, at all seasons
of festival, and more especially at Christmas,
fall encouragingly upon all the cooks of the
best houses round about. Perhaps, upon the
chief Bell-ringer — perhaps, we may say, upon
all the bell-ringers — and now and then upon
the Sexton, with whom he does a little private
business, in the way of gratuities from mourn-
ing relatives who come to visit graves. But
as for the Pew-opener, envy of her gains at
Christmas, and her obduracy in concealing
their extent, renders him a foe to her
existence, and haughtily unconscious of her
presence as often as he can affect not to see
her. There was, once upon a time, a good
Beadle, who married a Pew-opener — but it
was a long while ago — so long, that it is
thought to have been in the good old — &c.

19

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

Christmas is not what it was to THE POST-
MAN. The Government has interfered sadly
with his collection of " boxes " from house to
house ; so that now he only receives grate-
fully a shilling, here and there, in streets where
formerly he had but to announce, after a loud
double-rap, that " the Postman has called for
his Christmas-box ! " and down came the
shilling, almost as a lawful right. He looks
melancholy as he sits on the bench outside a
country public-house j and when the Landlord
inquires the cause, he hints at the altered
times. But he does not get much sympathy
in this quarter ; for THE PUBLICAN feels that
the alteration is considerably in his favour.
He has had a new beer-machine for his bar,
all beautiful with inlaid brass and ivory ; he
has added a wing to his house, and he feels a
proud consciousness that, if all his town rela-
tions live in " palaces," he is quite as important
to the sinners, his subjects, in the country.

To THE CATTLE-DROVER this is a season of
arduous business, by day and by night, urging
his fatigued and often refractory beasts along
the dark roads ; and when they enter among
the many lights and glare of London, as they
sometimes do in the evening, what Christmas
is to the poor cattle, as well as the men, may
be conjectured ; and all things considered, one
may fairly say the oxen have the worst of it.
THE SHEPHERD who is driving a flock of
20

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

sheep to the Christmas market, seldom sees
much amusement by the way ; events with
him are rare; but the journey of THE PIG-
DROVERS up to town is always a " chequered "
history. One pig or another is sure to be of
an original turn of mind, and several are sure
to follow his example for a little while, and
then branch off into a line of conduct suited
exclusively to their own individuality : under
cart-wheels, dodging round pumps, hiding
noses behind tree-trunks in the country, and
behind theatrical boards in the front of town
shops ; rushing into hedges, and round hay-
stacks, as the drove moves unwillingly along
lanes and roads ; and into wine-cellars, and
round lamp-posts, and up "all manner of
streets" in London. THE TURKEY-DROVER
has also a very busy time of it just now ; and
THE GOOSE-DROVER far more. The greater
difficulty attending the flocks of geese is not
because they are so much more numerous than
the turkeys, as on account of the perverse,
irritable, and stupid conditions of mind which
alternate with the goose. It is to be remem-
bered that the warlike turkey-cock (so aptly
called in Scotland the bubbly-jock) and the
mature fierce-necked, wing-threatening, uni-
versally-assaulting gander, being preserved by
their toughness, are not present in these festive
processions. We speak only of the young and
middle-aged turkey and goose ; but while we
21

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

give the degree of difficulty in their safe-
conduct very much to the side of the latter, we
are almost disposed to agree with the eminent
poet, who has sung its praises in another sense,
finely combining with that praise a kind of
hint at a moral justification for its death :

" Of all the fowls that stock the farm,

The Goose must be preferred ;
There is so much of nutriment
In that weak-minded bird."

Christmas to THE BUTCHER is nothing less
than a bazaar of fine meat, displayed with all
the elegancies (they are not numerous) of
which his craft is susceptible. With a smiling
countenance and ruddy cheek he walks back-
wards and forwards, through his shop all hung
with choice specimens of last year's " grass "-
the sun gleaming across them by day, and the
gas shining at night upon the polished surfaces,
and delicate white fat, and sparkling amidst
the branches of holly, stuck about in all direc-
tions. He very much approves of the vigorous
way in which one of his men continues to
bawl in a sharp, quick tone, " Now then,
t' buy ! t' buy ! " when the most unlikely
people, or when no people at all, are passing.
It all looks like business and bustle.

THE BAKER stands amidst his walls of
loaves, built up, shelf upon shelf, — with other
shelves packed close with quartern and half-

22

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

quartern paper-bags of flour, — and he glances
from the topmost tier down to the flour-
whitened trap-door in one corner of his shop-
floor, wherefrom appears an ascending tray,
heaped up with long French rolls, cottage-
loaves, twists, rusks, and hot-spiced ginger-
bread-nuts. This loaded tray continues to rise
upon a man's head, which is gradually followed
by his body, and the whole structure approach-
ing the counter is speedily unloaded. In less
than half-an-hour, all that was thus brought
from below has disappeared ; the walls of
loaves have diminished in great gaps ; more
loaves come smoking in, to supply their places,
and more trays of rolls, twists, gingerbread-
nuts, and fancy bread, with piles of biscuits,
ascend through the trap-door. The Baker has
a nice-looking daughter (as most bakers in
England have), and she now comes in smiling,
and displaying a row of pearly teeth, and
assists in taking money. They both agree that
although summer has its advantages, there is
no time of the year so pleasant as Christmas.

THE GROCER is one of the most flourishing
men in all the world at this season. His shop
is a small and over-crowded epitome of the
produce of the East. He is evidently in con-
stant correspondence with China, has the most
" friendly relations " in India, is on familiar
terms with the Spice Islands, has confidential
friends in Egypt, Barbary, and on " Candy's

23

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

shore ; " while, as to Jamaica, and other West
India Islands, he has a box, a cask, or a
case, by every post, to say nothing of Arabia,
France, Greece, Spain, Italy, and, in fine, all
the trading ports of the Mediterranean Sea.
To the Grocer we may fairly say that Christ-
mas is a general shaking by the hand, with
fingers extremely sticky, of foreign relations
and agents in every country, whence something
good to eat, in the shape of dried fruits, spices,
teas, coffees, sugars, preserves and condiments,
are possible to be procured. If he has a newly-
arrived Chinese picture, inlaid caddy, monster
idol, or tea-pot, now is his time to make a
feature of it in his window !

THE GREEN-GROCER is a genuine English-
man ; he cannot boast of the foreign com-
modities of the tea-and-sugar mountebank over
the way. He has no wish to do it. He deals
entirely in home produce. All that he sells is
the natural result of the cultivation of the soil
of his native country : from celery, beetroot,
sea-kale, and cabbage-sprouts, to Jerusalem
artichokes and sage and onions. All of
English growth ! He could very easily hollow
out a turnip ; cut eyes, nose, and mouth in it ;
stick a bit of candle inside ; and then set it up
for a "show," all among the endive and
parsley, in the middle of his window on
Christmas Eve ; but he scorns all such
attempts to attract public attention. It may
24

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

be very well for the Grocer over the way ; but
that sort of thing won't do for a man who
deals in natural greens !

Christmas, to THE PASTRYCOOK, is the
season when the human mind, if well regu-
lated, is chiefly occupied in the contemplation
of mince-pies. Also in eating them, and
decidedly in paying for them. But a very large
consumption of holiday plum-cakes is not the
less expected by the patriotic pastrycook.
There is another yet greater event in his
mind, though he does not break ground with
this till after Christmas Day ; and that is, the
advance of Twelfth Night. While, therefore,
he expects the public to be solely occupied
with mince-pies and other seasonable matters,
he is secretly at work in the production of a
full set (we forget how many he told us made
a set) of the richest and most elaborately
decorated and " dramatised " Twelfth Cakes
which the juvenile world of England has ever
yet beheld. The man's half-crazy. His wife
says he gets no sleep with thinking of his cakes.
The other night he started up in bed, and cried
out " Sugar-frost and whitening ! " till his
night-cap stood on end. Though why on
earth — as the good lady remarked, on second
thoughts, "he should talk of whitening, she
couldn't form the remotest idea in life ! "

No doubt Christmas is the season which
calls forth the most unmitigated hatred of

25

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

poachers in the breast of the patriotic POUL-
TERER. He says they are pests of society, and
the wickedest men going. There is no excuse
for strong fellows leading an idle life, as most
of the poachers do. It is worse than idle ; he
calls it thievish and villanous. He would be
the last man in all England to encourage such
doings. On the contrary, he would show them
no mercy. Every man-jack of them that could
be caught, he would send for two or three days
to hard work on Primrose Hill. After this
they would become better and wiser men ;
more industrious, more cautious ; not so full
of talk in beer-houses ; more punctual and
reliable ; altogether more useful members of
society. But as for his show of hares and other
game, this Christmas, he will warrant every
one, as having been honestly come by, and
duly paid for, and not too " high " for imme-
diate eating. What a capital show he makes
this year ! One hundred and twenty long-
legs (as he familiarly calls the hares), three
hundred rabbits, fifty brace of pheasants, ninety
brace of " birds," twenty brace of woodcocks,
thirty brace of snipe, a hundred and fifty brace
of pigeons, two hundred turkeys, three hundred
geese, with wild ducks, tame ducks, and barn-
door fowls innumerable ! The inside of his
shop is full in every corner ; from countless
hooks hang rows of turkeys by the necks, and
long double chains of sausages and rows of
26

TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE

ducks, and rows of fowls, all dangling by the
necks, too, and in full feather ; while his
shelves present compact arrays of fowls plucked
and trussed, and powdered, and blown up in
the breast with a blow-pipe : their livers and
gizzards tucked neatly, like opera-hats, under
their pinions. Rows of them, also, like small
batteries, front the street. The outside of his
house, even up to the second-floor window, is
hung with hares, rabbits, pheasants, wild ducks,
turkeys, and partridges.

But, if Christmas is a season of greatness to
some, of hilarity to many, of importance to all,
it is pre-eminently a season of equal anxiety
and splendour to THE COOK. Her long kitchen-
range is a perfect bonfire from morning to
night, while the various bright utensils which
are placed upon the chimney-piece and on the
walls at both sides of it, are profusely inter-
spersed with twigs and boughs of holly.
" Now, do get out of my way, all of you ! —
don't you see how much I have got on my
mind with this Christmas dinner ! Where's
Jane ? — Jane Stokes ! — oh, the plague of
kitchen-maids ! they're always out of the
way at the moment they're most wanted.
Barbara, are the vegetables washed ? " " Not
yet, Cook ! " It's always " not yet " with
them scullery-girls ! Oh, how the Cook
wishes there were no need for any help from
any soul alive, if so be as she could . but do
27

CHRISTMAS, BUNCH OF PEOPLE

everything herself, which is that is where it
is and all about it ! But the Christmas dinner
don't get spoiled ; by no means — everything
turns out excellently, and compliments, like
full-blown cabbage-roses, are showered upon
Cook from the visitors of the hospitable board.
They are brought to her, as she sits wiping
her forehead, and all her face and throat, in
a cool and remote corner. Her heart expands ;
she loves all mankind ; and she retires to rest,
after a small glass of cordial, at peace with
herself and all the world.

28

An Idyl for Christmas
In-doors

BY EDMUND OLLIER

" The houses were decked with evergreens in
December that the Sylvan Spirits might repair to
them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold
winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage
of their abodes.'7 — BRAND'S Popular Antiquities.

SCENE : A room by twilight, on Christmas Eve : the
Jire burning with a sleepy red. Branches of
Holly, Laurel, and Mistletoe, hanging on the
'walls. A Sylvan Spirit sitting in each plant.

SPIRIT OF THE HOLLY

THE icy streams are black and slow ;
The icy wind goes sighing, sighing ;
And far around, and deep below,
The great, broad, blank, unfeatured snow
On the idle earth is lying ;
And the birds in the air are dying.
Just now, ere the day-beams fled,
Out of doors I thrust my head,
And saw the livid western light
29

IDYL FOR CHRISTMAS IN-DOORS

Shrink up, like an eye bewitch'd,

At the staring of the Night.

The bare branches writhed and twitch'd ;

And the holly-bushes old

Chatter' d among themselves for cold,

And scraped their leaves 'gainst one another,

And nestled close, like child with mother.

Ay, not all the globy fire

Of their berries, scarlet hot,

Which the mortals all admire,

Could their bodies warm a jot :

They look'd heavy and sad, God wot !

The nested birds sat close together,

'Plaining of the mournful weather ;

And the tough and tangled hedges,

Near and distant, mark'd the track

Of the roadway, and the edges

Of the fields, with lines of black.

Soon I skipp'd, all shivering, back.

Here, beneath the sheltering eaves

Of the ceiling, dry and warm,

Air, like breath of Summer, weaves

In between my glossy leaves,

Doing me no harm :

And the CHRISTMAS spirit benign

Sparkles in my heart like wine.

SPIRIT OF THE LAUREL

GONE is the Summer's warmth and light ;
Gone are the rich, red Autumn days ;

30

IDYL FOR CHRISTMAS IN-DOORS

And Winter old, and Winter white,
Sits moodily in the open ways.
Like a great dumb marble statue,
'Bideth he upon the wold ;
And his grey eyes, staring at you,
Make you also dumb with cold.
And the woods grow lean and swarth
In the vexings of the North ;
Fill'd with sighings and lamentations
Of the winged forest nations,
Who, beneath their shattered bowers,
Wonder at the gusty showers,
And the length of the dark hours.
But the in-door year is bright
With the flush of CHRISTMAS light ;
And the breath of that glad comer
Kindles with a second Summer,
In the which, blithe hearts are seen
Bursting into tenfold green,
Till they sit embower'd, and sing
Under their own blossoming.
Therefore we, the woodland fairies,
Hold at present with the Lares,
Leaving Winter for the noon
Of this glowing household June ;
Whereunto an added splendour
Preternatural we render,
Quickening, as with inward soul,
The intensely-burning coal.

IDYL FOR CHRISTMAS IN-DOORS

SPIRIT OF THE MISTLETOE

BEHIND the night young morn is sleeping,

And new hope underlies old weeping.

So, though all the woods are stark,

And the heavens are drowsy-dark,

Earth, within her shadows dun,

Swings about the golden sun,

Firm and steadily,

True and readily,

Strong in her pulses, every one.

In a deadly sleep she seems ;

But her heart is full of dreams —

Full of dreaming and of vision,

Subtle, typical, Elysian,

Out of which, in time, shall rise

All the New Year's verities.

And the spirit within her veins

Laughs and leaps like April rains ;

Warming with electric breath

The dark coldness underneath,

Where, close shut from human seeing,

Lie the secret nests of being,

And the embryo phantoms, — hosts

Of pale ante-natal ghosts, —

Bloodless germs of flowers and leaves,

From which the lady Spring receives,

When they wake to life, the flush

Of her many-colour'd blush.

Meanwhile, every shade of sadness

Melts away in CHRISTMAS gladness.

32

IDYL FOR CHRISTMAS IN-DOORS

Green old CHRISTMAS ! he doth bring
With him his peculiar Spring ; —
Newly-germinating kindness,
Mutual help in human blindness,
Closing of old wounds, fresh greetings,
Souls a-flow at genial meetings,
Hovering fancies, loving laughter,
And the grave thoughts coming after ;
All the lightness, brightness, dancing,
Interflowing, rainbow glancing,
Awful sweetness, wing'd with pleasure,
Of a heart that has no measure.

ALL

THEREFORE will we here remain

Till the woods are green again,

And the sun makes golden glooms

In the forest's pillar'd rooms.

Here we can abide together

Through the fire-lit CHRISTMAS weather,

And, though none may us descry,

Touch with sense of mystery

The hot feasting and loud joy,

Which, uncurb'd, themselves destroy,

And die childless : for true mirth,

Like the Heaven-embraced earth,

Should be large and full — yet bound

By the haunted depths all round.

33

What Christmas Is in
Country Places

BY HARRIET MARTINEAU

IF we want to see the good old Christmas — •
the traditional Christmas — of old England, we
must look for it in the country. There are
lasting reasons why the keeping of Christmas
cannot change in the country as it may in
towns. The seasons themselves ordain the
festival. The close of the year is an interval
of leisure in agricultural regions ; the only
interval of complete leisure in the year ; and
all influences and opportunities concur to make
it a season of holiday and festivity. If the
weather is what it ought to be at that time,
the autumn crops are in the ground ; and the
springing wheat is safely covered up with snow.
Everything is done for the soil that can be
done at present ; and as for the clearing and
trimming and repairing, all that can be looked
to in the after part of the winter ; and the
planting is safe if done before Candlemas.
The plashing of hedges, and cleaning of

34

CHRISTMAS, COUNTRY PLACES

ditches, and trimming of lanes, and mending
of roads, can be got through between Twelfth
Night and the early spring ploughing ; and a
fortnight may well be given to jollity, and
complete change.

Such a holiday requires a good deal of prepara-
tion : so Christmas is, in this way also, a more
weighty affair in the rural districts than else-
where. The strong beer must be brewed.
The pigs must be killed weeks before ; the
lard is wanted ; the bacon has to be cured j
the hams will be in request ; and, if brawn is
sent to the towns, it must be ready before the
children come home for the holidays. Then,
there is the fattening of the turkeys and geese
to be attended to ; a score or two of them to
be sent to London, and perhaps half-a-dozen
to be enjoyed at home. When the gentleman,
or the farmer, or the country shop-keeper, goes
to the great town for his happy boys and girls,
he has a good deal of shopping to do. Besides
carrying a note to the haberdasher, and order-
ing coffee, tea, dried fruit, and spices, he must
remember not to forget the packs of cards that
will be v/anted for loo and whist. Perhaps
he carries a secret order for fiddlestrings from
a neighbour who is practising his part in good
time.

There is one order of persons in the country
to whom the month of December is anything
but a holiday season — the cooks. Don't tell

35

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

us of town cooks in the same breath ! It is
really overpowering to the mind to think what
the country cooks have to attend to. The
goose-pie, alone, is an achievement to be com-
placent about ; even the most ordinary goose-
pie ; still more, a superior one, with a whole
goose in the middle, and another cut up and
laid round ; with a fowl or two, and a pheasant
or two, and a few larks put into odd corners ;
and the top, all shiny with white of egg, figured
over with leaves of pastry, and tendrils and
crinkle-crankles, with a bunch of the more
delicate bird feet standing up in the middle.
The oven is the cook's child and slave ; the
great concern of her life, at this season. She
pets it, she humours it, she scolds it, and she
works it without rest. Before daylight she is
at it — baking her oat-bread ; that bread which
requires such perfect behaviour on the part of
the oven ! Long lines of oat-cakes hang over-
head, to grow crisp before breakfast ; and these
are to be put away when crisp, to make room
for others ; for she can hardly make too much.
After breakfast, and all day, she is making and
baking meat-pies, mince-pies, sausage- rolls,
fruit-pies, and cakes of all shapes, sizes, and
colours. And at night, when she can scarcely
stand for fatigue, she " banks " the oven fire,
and puts in the great jar of stock for the
soups, that the drawing may go on, from all
sorts of savoury odds and ends, while every-

36

IN COUNTRY PLACES

thing but the drowsy fire is asleep. She
wishes the dear little lasses would not come
messing and fussing about, making ginger-
bread and cheesecakes. She would rather do
it herself, than have them in her way. But
she has not the heart to tell them so. On the
contrary, she gives them ginger, and cuts the
citron-peel bountifully for them ; hoping, the
while, that the weather will be fine enough
for them to go into the woods with their
brothers for holly and ivy. Meantime, the
dairy-woman says (what she declares every
Christmas) that she never saw such a demand
for cream and butter ; and that, before Twelfth
N ight, there will be none. And how, at that
season, can she supply eggs by scores, as she
is expected to do ? The gingerbread baked,
the rosiest apples picked out from their straw
in the apple-closet, the cats, and dogs, and
canary birds, played with and fed, the little
lasses run out to see what the boys are about.
The woodmen want something else than
green to dress the house with. They are
looking for the thickest, and hardest, and
knottiest block of wood they can find, that
will go into the kitchen chimney. A gnarled
stump of elm will serve their purpose best ;
and they trim it into a size to send home.
They fancy that their holiday is to last as
long as this log remains ; and they are satis-
fied that it will be uncommonly difficult to

37

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

burn up this one. This done, one of them
proceeds with the boys and girls to the copses
where the hollies are thickest ; and by carrying
his bill-hook, he saves a vast deal of destruction
by rending and tearing. The poor little birds,
which make the hollies so many aviaries in
winter, coming to feed on the berries, and to
pop in among the shining leaves for shelter,
are sadly scared, and out they flit on all sides,
and away to the great oak, where nobody will
follow them. For, alas ! there is no real
mistletoe now. There is to be something so
called hung from the middle of the kitchen
ceiling, that the lads and lasses may snatch
kisses and have their fun ; but it will have no
white berries, and no Druidical dignity about
it. It will be merely a bush of evergreen,
called by some a mistletoe, and by others the
Bob, which is supposed to be a corruption of
" bough." When all the party have got their
fagots tied up, and strung over their shoulders,
and button-holes, hats, and bonnets stuck with
sprigs, and gay with berries, it is time they
were going home ; for there is a vast deal to
be done this Christmas Eve, and the sunshine
is already between the hills, in soft yellow
gushes, and not on them.

A vast deal there is to be done j and
especially if there is any village near. First,
there is to dress the house with green ; and
then to go and help to adorn the church. The

33

IN COUNTRY PLACES

Bob must not be hung up till to-morrow :
but every door has a branch over it ; and the
leads of the latticed windows are stuck with
sprigs ; and every picture-frame, and looking-
glass, and candlestick is garnished. Any
"scraps" (very young children) who are too
small to help, pick up scattered holly-leaves,
and, being not allowed to go upon the rug, beg
somebody to throw them into the fire ; whence
ensues a series of cracklings, and sputtering
blazes, and lighting up of wide-open eyes. In
the midst of this — hark ! is not that the church
bell ? The boys go out to listen, and report
that it is so ; — the " Christmas deal " (or dole)
is about to begin ; so, off go all who are able,
up to the church.

It is very cold there, and dim, and dreary,
in spite of the candles, and the kindness, and
other good things that are collected there. By
the time the bell has ceased to clang, there are
a few gentlemen there, and a number of
widows, and aged men, and orphan children.
There are piles of blankets ; and bits of paper,
which are orders for coals. One gentleman
has sent a bag of silver money ; and another,
two or three sheep, cut up ready for cooking ;
and another, a great pile of loaves. The boys
run and bring down a ladder to dress the
pillars ; and scuffle in the galleries ; and ven-
ture into the pulpit, under pretence of dressing
the church. When the dole is done and the

39

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

poor people gone, the doors are closed ; and, if
the boys remain, they must be quiet ; for the
organist and the singers are going to rehearse
the anthem that is to be sung to-morrow. If
the boys are not quiet, they are turned
out.

There is plenty of bustle in the village.
The magistrates are in the long room of the
inn, settling justice business. The inn looks
as if it were illuminated. The waiters are
seen to glide across the hall ; and on the steps
are the old constable, and the new rural
policeman, and the tax-collector, and the post-
man. It is so cold that something steaming
hot will soon be brought for them to drink ;
and the poor postman will be taken on his
weak side. Christmas is a trying season to
him, with his weak head, and his popularity,
and his Christmas-boxes, and his constant
liability to be reported. Cold as it is, there
are women flitting about ; going to or from
the grocer's shop, and all bringing away the
same things. The grocers give away, this
night, to their regular customers, a good
mould candle each, and a nutmeg. This is
because the women must be up by candle-
light to-morrow, to make something that is to
be spiced with nutmeg. So a good number of
women pass by with a candle and a nutmeg ;
and some, with a bottle or pitcher, come up
the steps, and go to the bar for some rum.
40

IN COUNTRY PLACES

But the clock strikes supper-time, and away go
the boys home.

Somebody wonders at supper whether the
true oval mince-pie is really meant to be in the
form of a certain manger ; and its contents to
signify the gifts, various and rich, brought by
the Magi to that manger. And while the
little ones are staring at this news, somebody
else observes that it was a pretty idea of the
old pagans, in our island, of dressing up their
houses with evergreens, that there might be a
warm retreat for the spirits of the woods in
times of frost and bitter winter storms. Some
child peeps timidly up at the biggest branch in
the room, and fancies what it would be to
see some sprite sitting under a leaf, or dancing
along a spray. When supper is done, and
the youngest are gone to bed, having been told
not to be surprised if they should hear the
stars singing in the night, the rest of the party
turn to the fire, and begin to roast their chest-
nuts in the shovel, and to heat the elder-wine
in the old-fashioned saucepan, silvered inside.
One absent boy, staring at the fire, starts when
his father offers him a chestnut for his thoughts.
He hesitates, but his curiosity is vivid, and he
braves all the consequences of saying what he
is thinking about. He wonders whether he
might, just for once, — just for this once — go
to the stalls when midnight has struck, and
see whether the oxen are kneeling. He has

4*

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

heard, and perhaps read, that the oxen kneeled,
on the first Christmas Day, and kept the
manger warm with their breath ; and that all
oxen still kneel in their stalls when Christmas
Day comes in. Father and mother exchange
a quick glance of agreement to take this
seriously ; and they explain that there is now
so much uncertainty, since the New Style of
reckoning the days of the year was introduced,
that the oxen cannot be depended on ; and it
is not worth while to be out of bed at mid-
night for the chance. Some say the oxen
kneel punctually when Old Christmas comes
in ; and if so, they will not do it to-night.

This is not the quietest night of the year ;
even if nobody visits the oxen. Soon after all
are settled to sleep, sounds arise which thrill
through some who are half-awakened by them,
and then, remembering something about the
stars singing, the children rouse themselves,
and lie, with open eyes and ears, feeling that
Christmas morning has come. They must
soon, one would think, give up the star
theory ; for the music is only two riddles, or a
fiddle and clarionet ; or, possibly, a fiddle and
drum, with a voice or two, which can hardly
be likened to that of the spheres. The voices
sing, " While shepherds watch'd their flocks
by night ; " and then — marvellously enough —
single out this family of all the families on
the earth, to bless with the good wishes of the
42

IN COUNTRY PLACES

season. They certainly are wishing to master
and mistress and all the young ladies and
gentlemen, "good morning," and "a merry
Christmas and a happy New Year." Before
this celestial mystery is solved, and before the
distant twang of the fiddle is quite out of
hearing, the celestial mystery of sleep enwraps
the other, and lays it to rest until the morrow.
The boys — the elder ones — meant to keep
awake ; first, for the Waits, and afterwards to
determine for themselves whether the cock
crows all night on Christmas Eve, to keep all
hurtful things from walking the earth. When
the Waits are gone, they just remember that
any night, between this and Old Christmas,
will do for the cock, which is said to defy evil
spirits in this manner for the whole of that
season. Which the boys are very glad to
remember ; for they are excessively sleepy ;
so off they go into the land of dreams.

It is now past two ; and at three the maids
must be up. Christmas morning is the one,
of all the year, when, in the North of England
especially, families make a point of meeting,
and it must be at the breakfast-table. In
every house, far and near, where there is fuel
and flour, and a few pence to buy currants,
there are cakes making, which everybody must
eat of ; cakes of pastry, with currants between
the layers. The grocer has given the nut-
meg ; and those who can afford it, add rum,

43

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

and other dainties. The ladies are up be-
times, to set out the best candlesticks, to
garnish the table, to make the coffee, and to
prepare a welcome for all who claim a seat.
The infant in arms must be there, as seven
o'clock strikes. Any married brother or sister,
living within reach, must be there, with the
whole family train. Long before sunrise,
there they sit, in the glow of the fire and the
glitter of candles, chatting and laughing, and
exchanging good wishes.

In due time, the church-bell calls the flock
of worshippers from over hill, and down dale,
and along commons, and across fields : and
presently they are seen coming, all in their
best, — the majority probably saying the same
thing, — that, somehow, it seems always to be
fine on Christmas Day. Then, one may
reckon up the exceptions he remembers ; and
another may tell of different sorts of fine
weather that he has known ; how, on one
occasion, his daughter gathered thirty-four
sorts of flowers in their own garden on Christ-
mas Day ; and the rose-bushes had not lost
their leaves on Twelfth Day ; and then the
wise will agree how much they prefer a good
seasonable frost and sheeted snow like this, to
April weather in December.

Service over, the bell silent, and the sexton
turning the key in the lock, off run the young
men, out of reach of remonstrance, to shoot,
44

IN COUNTRY PLACES

until dinner at least, — more probably until the
light fails. They shoot almost anything that
comes across them, but especially little birds, —
chaffinches, blackbirds, thrushes, — any winged
creature distressed by the cold, or betrayed by
the smooth and cruel snow. The little chil-
dren at home are doing better than their elder
brothers. They are putting out crums of
bread for the robins, and feeling sorry and
surprised that robins prefer bread to plum-
pudding. They would have given the robins
some of their own pudding, if they had but
liked it.

In every house, there is dinner to-day, — of
one sort or another, — except where the closed
shutter shows that the folk are out to dinner.
The commonest dinner in the poorer houses
— in some parts of the country — is a curious
sort of mutton pie. The meat is cut off a loin
of mutton, and reduced to mouthfuls, and then
strewed over with currants or raisins and spice,
and the whole covered in with a stout crust.
In some places, the dinner is baked meat and
potatoes : in too many cottages, there is nothing
better than a morsel of bacon to flavour the
bread or potatoes. But it may be safely said
that there is more and better dining in England
on Christmas Day than on any other day of the
year.

In the houses of gentry and farmers, the
dinner and dessert are a long affair, and soon

45

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

followed by tea, that the sports may begin.
Everybody knows what these sports are, in
parlour, hall, and kitchen : — singing, dancing,
cards, blind-man's-buff, and other such games ;
forfeits, ghost-story telling, snap-dragon ; —
these, with a bountiful supper interposed, last-
ing till midnight. In scattered houses, among
the wilds, card-playing goes on briskly. Wher-
ever there are Wesleyans enough to form a
congregation, they are collected at a tea-drink-
ing in their chapel ; and they spend the
evening in singing hymns. Where there are
Germans settled, or any leading family which
has been in Germany, there is a Christmas
tree lighted up somewhere. Those Christmas
trees are as prolific as the inexhaustible cedars
of Lebanon. Wherever one strikes root, a
great number is sure to spring up under its
shelter.

However spent, the evening comes to an
end. The hymns in the chapel, and the carols
in the kitchen, and the piano in the parlour
are all hushed. The ghosts have glided by
into the night. The forfeits are redeemed.
The blind-man has recovered his sight, and
lost it again in sleep. The dust of the dancers
has subsided. The fires are nearly out, and
the candles quite so. The reflection that the
great day is over, would have been too much
for some little hearts, sighing before they slept,
but for the thought that to-morrow is Boxing
46

IN COUNTRY PLACES

Day ; and that Twelfth Night is yet to
come.

But, first, will come New Year's Eve, with
its singular inconvenience (in some districts)
of nothing whatever being carried out of the
house for twenty-four hours, lest, in throwing
away anything, you should be throwing away
some luck for the next year. Not a potato-
paring, nor a drop of soap-suds or cabbage-
water, not a cinder, nor a pinch of dust, must
be removed till New Year's morning. In
these places, there is one person who must be
stirring early — the darkest man in the neigh-
bourhood. It is a serious thing there to have
a swarthy complexion and black hair ; for the
owner cannot refuse to his acquaintance the
good luck of his being the first to enter their
houses on New Year's Day. If he is poor, or
his time is precious, he is regularly paid for his
visit. He comes at daybreak, with something
in his hand, if it is only an orange or an egg,
or a bit of ribbon, or a twopenny picture. He
can't stay a minute, — he has so many to visit ;
but he leaves peace of mind behind him. His
friends begin the year with the advantage of
having seen a dark man enter their house the
first in the New Year.

Such, in its general features, is Christmas,
throughout the rural districts of Old England.
Here, the revellers may be living in the midst
of pastoral levels, all sheeted with snow ; there,

47

CHRISTMAS, COUNTRY PLACES

in deep lanes, or round a village green, with
ploughed slopes rising on either hand : here, on
the spurs of mountains, with glittering icicles
hanging from the grey precipices above them,
and the accustomed waterfall bound in silence
by the frost beside their doors ; and there
again, they may be within hearing of the
wintry surge, booming along the rocky shore ;
but the revelry is of much the same character
everywhere. There may be one old super-
stition in one place, and another in another ;
but that which is no superstition is every-
where ; — the hospitality, the mirth, the social
glow which spreads from heart to heart, which
thaws the pride and the purse-strings, and
brightens the eyes and affections.

What Christmas Is in the
Company of John Doe

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

I HAVE kept (amongst a store of jovial,
genial, heart-stirring returns of the season)
some very dismal Christmases. I have kept
Christmas in Constantinople, at a horrible
Pera hotel, where I attempted the manufac-
ture of a plum-pudding from the macaroni-
soup they served me for dinner, mingled with
some Zante currants, and a box of figs I had
brought from Smyrna ; and where I sat, until
very late at night, endeavouring to persuade
myself that it was cold and "Christmassy"
(though it wasn't), drinking Levant wine, and
listening to the howling of the dogs outside,
mingled with the clank of a portable fire-
engine, which some soldiers were carrying to
one of those extensive conflagrations which
never happen in Constantinople oftener than
three times a day. I have kept Christmas on
board a Boulogne packet, in company with a
basin, several despair-stricken females, and a
49 E

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

damp steward ; who, to all our inquiries
whether we should be " in soon," had the one
unvarying answer of w pretty near " to give.
I have kept Christmas, when a boy, at a
French boarding-school, where they gave me
nothing but lentils and bouilli for dinner, on
the auspicious day itself. I have kept Christ-
mas by the bedside of a sick friend, and
wished him the compliments of the season in
his physic-bottles (had they contained another
six months' life, poor soul !). I have kept
Christmas at rich men's tables, where I have
been uncomfortable ; and once in a cobbler's
shop, where I was excessively convivial. I
have spent one Christmas in prison. Start
not, urbane reader ! I was not sent there for
larceny, nor for misdemeanour : but for debt.
It was Christmas Eve ; and I — my name is
Prupper — was taking my walks abroad. I
walked through the crowded Strand, elate,
hilarious, benignant, for the feast was prepared,
and the guests were bidden. Such a turkey I
had ordered ! Not the prize one with the
ribbons — I mistrusted that ; but a plump,
tender, white-breasted bird, a king of turkeys.
It was to be boiled with oyster-sauce ; and the
rest of the Christmas dinner was to consist of
that noble sirloin of roast beef, and that im-
mortal cod's head and shoulders ! I had
bought the materials for the pudding too,
some half-hour previously : the plums and the
50

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

currants, the citron and the allspice, the flour
and the eggs. I was happy.

Onward, by the bright grocers' shops,
thronged with pudding-purchasers ! Onward,
by the bookseller's, though lingering, it may
be, for a moment, by the gorgeous Christmas
books, with their bright binding, and brighter
pictures. Onward, by the pastrycook's ! On-
ward, elate, hilarious, and benignant, until,
just as I stopped by a poulterer's shop, to
admire the finest capon that ever London
or Christmas saw, a hand was laid on my
shoulder !

" Before our sovereign lady the Queen " —
" by the grace of God, greeting " — " that you
take the body of Thomas Prupper, and him
safely keep " — " and for so doing, this shall be
your warrant."

These dread and significant words swam
before my dazzled eyelids, dancing maniac
hornpipes on a parchment slip of paper. I
was to keep Christmas in no other company
than that of the once celebrated fictitious
personage, supposed to be the familiar of all
persons similarly situated — JOHN DOE.

I remembered with horror, that some fort-
night previously, a lawyer's clerk deposited on
my shoulder a slip of paper, which he stated
to be the copy of a writ, and in which her
Majesty the Queen (mixed up for the nonce
with John, Lord Campbell) was pleased to

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

command me to enter an appearance some-
where, by such a day, in order to answer the
plaint of somebody, who said I owed him
some money. Now, an appearance had not
been entered, and judgment had gone by de-
fault, and execution had been obtained against
me. The Sheriff of Middlesex (who is popu-
larly, though erroneously, supposed to be inces-
santly running up and down in his bailiwick)
had had a writ of fieri facias, vulgarly termed
a /. fa. against my goods ; but hearing, or
satisfying himself by adroit espionage, that I
had no goods, he had made a return of nulla
bona. Then had he invoked the aid of a more
subtle and potential instrument, likewise on
parchment, called a capias ad satisfaciendum,
abbreviated in legal parlance into ca. sa.,
against my body. This writ he had confided
to Aminadab, his man j and Aminadab, run-
ning, as he was in duty bound to do, up and
down in his section of the bailiwick, had come
across me, and had made me the captive of
his bow and spear. He called it, less meta-
phorically, " nabbing me."

Mr. Aminadab (tall, aquiline-nosed, olea-
ginous, somewhat dirty ; clad in a green New-
market coat, a crimson velvet waistcoat, a
purple satin neckcloth with gold flowers, two
watch-guards, and four diamond rings) — Mr.
Aminadab proposed that " something should
be done." Would I go to Whitecross Street

52

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

at once ? or to Blowman's, in Cursitor Street ?
or would I just step into Peele's Coffee-house
for a moment ? Mr. Aminadab was perfectly
polite, and indefatigably suggestive.

The capture had been made in Fleet Street ;
so we stepped into Peele's, and while Mr.
Aminadab sipped the pint of wine which he
had obligingly suggested I should order, I began
to look my position in the face. Execution
taken out for forty-five pounds, nine and nine-
pence. Ca. sa.y a guinea ; ft. fa., a guinea ;
capture, a guinea ; those were all the costs as
yet. Now, some days after I was served with
the writ, I had paid the plaintiflPs lawyer, on
account, thirty pounds. In the innocence of
my heart, I imagined that, by the County
Court Act, I could not be arrested for the
balance, it being under twenty pounds. Mr.
Aminadab laughed with contemptuous pity.

" We don't do business that way," said he ;
" we goes in for the whole lot, and then you
pleads your set-off, you know."

The long and the short of the matter was,
that I had eighteen pounds, twelve shillings
and ninepence, to pay, before my friend in the
purple neckcloth would relinquish his grasp ;
and that to satisfy the demand, I had exactly
the sum of two pounds, two and a half-penny,
and a gold watch, on which a relation of mine
would probably advance four pounds more.
So, I fell to writing letters, Mr. Aminadab

53

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

sipping the wine and playing with one of his
watch-chains in the meanwhile.

I wrote to Jones, Brown, and Robinson—-
to Thompson, and to Jackson likewise. I
wrote to my surly uncle in Pudding Lane.
Now was the time to put the disinterested
friendship of Brown to the test ; to avail myself
of the repeated offers of service from Jones ;
to ask for the loan of that sixpence which
Robinson had repeatedly declared was at my
command as long as he had a shilling. I sealed
the letters with an unsteady hand, and con-
sulted Mr. Aminadab as to their despatch.
That gentleman, by some feat of legerdemain,
called up from the bowels of the earth, or from
one of those mysterious localities known as
" round the corner," two sprites : one, his
immediate assistant ; seedier, however, and
not jewelled, who carried a knobby stick which
he continually gnawed. The other, a horrible
little man with a white head and a white
neckcloth, twisted round his neck like a halter.
His eye was red, and his teeth were gone, and
the odour of rum compassed him about, like a
cloak. To these two acolytes my notes were
confided, and they were directed to bring the
answers like lightning to Blowman's. To
Blowman's, in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane,
I was bound, and a cab was straightway called
for my conveyance thereto. For the matter
of that, the distance was so short, I might

54

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

easily have walked, but I could not divest my-
self of the idea that everybody in the street
knew I was a prisoner.

I was soon within the hospitable doors of
Mr. Blowman, officer to the Sheriff of Middle-
sex. His hospitable doors were double, and,
for more hospitality, heavily barred, locked,
and chained. These, with the exceptions of
barred windows, and a species of grating-
roofed yard outside, like a monster bird-cage,
were the only visible signs of captivity. Yet
there was enough stone in the hearts, and iron
in the souls, of Mr. Blowman's inmates, to
build a score of lock-up houses. For that you
may take my word.

I refused the offer of a private room, and
was conducted to the coffee-room, where Mr.
Aminadab left me, for a while, to my own
reflections ; and to wait for the answers to my
letters.

They came — and one friend into the bar-
gain. Jones had gone to Hammersmith, and
wouldn't be back till next July. Brown had
been disappointed in the City. Robinson's
money was all locked up. Thompson expected
to be locked up himself. Jackson was brief,
but explicit : he said he " would rather not."

My friend brought me a carpet-bag, with
what clothes I wanted in it. He advised me,
moreover, to go to Whitecross Street at once,
for a sojourn at Mr. Blowman's domicile would

55

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

cost me something like a guinea per diem.
So, summoning Mr. Aminadab, who had
obligingly waited to see if I could raise the
money or not, I announced my intention of
being conveyed to gaol at once. I paid half-
a-guinea for the accommodation I had had at
Mr. Blowman's ; I made a pecuniary acknow-
ledgment of Mr. Aminadab's politeness ; and
I did not fail to remember the old man in the
white halter and the spirituous mantle. Then,
when I had also remembered a red-headed
little Jew boy who acted as Cerberus to this
Hades, and appeared to be continually washing
his hands (though they never seemed one whit
the cleaner for the operation), another cab
was called, and off I went to Whitecross
Street, with a heart considerably heavier than
a paving-stone.

I had already been three hours in captivity,
and it was getting on for eight o'clock. The
cab was proceeding along Holborn, and I
thought, involuntarily, of Mr. Samuel Hall,
black and grimy, making his progress through
the same thoroughfare, by the Oxford Road,
and so on to Tyburn, bowing to the crowd
and cursing the Ordinary. The foot-pave-
ment on either side was thronged with people
at their Christmas marketing, or, at least, on
some Christmas business — so it seemed to me.
Goose Clubs were being held at the public-
houses — " sweeps " for sucking-pigs, plum-

56

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

puddings, and bottles of gin. Some ladies and
gentlemen had begun their Christmas rather
too early, and were meandering unsteadily
over the flagstones. Fiddlers were in great
request, being sought for in small beer-shops,
and borne off bodily from bars, to assist at
Christmas Eve merry-makings. An immense
deal of hand-shaking was going on, and I was
very much afraid, a good deal more " stand-
ing " than was consistent with the strict rules
of temperance. Everybody kept saying that
it was " only once a year," and made that an
apology (so prone are mankind to the use of
trivial excuses !) for their sins against Father
Mathew. Loud laughter rang through the
frosty air. Pleasant jokes, innocent " chaff,"
passed ; grocers' young men toiled lustily,
wiping their hot faces ever and anon ; butchers
took no rest ; prize beef melted away from
very richness before my eyes ; and in the
midst of all the bustle and jollity, the
crowding, laughing, drinking, and shouting,
I was still on my unvarying way to White-
cross Street.

There was a man resting a child's coffin on
a railing, and chattering with a pot-boy, with
whom he shared a pot of porter, " with the
sharp edge taken off." There are heavy
hearts — heavier perchance than yours, in
London this Christmas Eve, my friend Prup-
per, thought I. To-morrow's dawn will

57

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

bring sorrow and faint-heartedness to many
thousands — to oceans of humanity, of which
you are but a single 'drop.

The cab had conveyed me through Smith-
field Market, and now rumbled up Barbican.
My companion, the gentleman with the crab-
stick (to whose care Mr. Aminadab had
consigned me) beguiled the time with pleasant
and instructive conversation. He told me
that he had " nabbed a many parties." That
he had captured a Doctor of Divinity going
to a Christmas, a bridegroom starting for the
honeymoon, a Colonel of Hussars in full fig
for her Majesty's drawing-room. That he
had the honour once of " nabbing " the eldest
son of a peer of the realm, who, however,
escaped from him through a second-floor
window, and over the tiles. That he was
once commissioned to " nab " the celebrated
Mr. Wix, of the Theatres Royal. That Mr.
Wix, being in the act of playing the Baron
Spolaccio, in the famous tragedy of " Love,
Ruin, and Revenge," he, Crabstick, permitted
him, in deference to the interests of the drama,
to play the part out, stationing an assistant at
each wing to prevent escape. That the de-
lusive Wix " bilked " him, by going down a
trap. That he, Crabstick, captured him, not-
withstanding, under the stage, though opposed
by the gigantic Wix himself, two stage
carpenters, a demon, and the Third Citizen.

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

That Wix rushed on the stage and explained
his position to the audience, whereupon the
gallery (Wix being an especial favourite of
theirs) expressed a strong desire to have his
(Crabstick's) blood ; and, failing to obtain
that, tore up the benches ; in the midst of
which operation the recalcitrant Wix was
removed. With these and similar anecdotes
of the nobility, gentry, and the public in
general, he was kind enough to regale me,
until the cab stopped. I alighted in a narrow,
dirty street ; was hurried up a steep flight of
steps ; a heavy door clanged behind me ; and
Crabstick, pocketing his small gratuity, wished
me a good night and a merry Christmas. A
merry Christmas : ugh !

That night I slept in a dreadful place,
called the Reception ward, — on an iron bed-
stead, in a room with a stone floor. I was
alone, and horribly miserable. I heard the
Waits playing in the distance, and dreamed I
was at a Christmas party.

Christmas morning in Whitecross Street
Prison ! A turnkey conducted me to the
" Middlesex side " — a long, dreary yard — on
either side of which were doors leading into
wards, or coffee-rooms, on the ground floor,
and, by stone staircases, to sleeping apartments
above. It was all very cold, very dismal, very
gloomy. I entered the ward allotted to me,
Number Seven, left. It was a long room,

59

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

with barred windows, cross-tables and benches,
with an aisle between ; a large fire at the
farther end ; " Dum spiro, spero," painted
above the mantel-piece. Twenty or thirty
prisoners and their friends were sitting at the
tables, smoking pipes, drinking beer, or reading
newspapers. But for the unmistakable jail-
bird look about the majority of the guests, the
unshorn faces, the slipshod feet, the barred
windows, and the stone floor, I might have
fancied myself in a large tap-room.

There was holly and mistletoe round the
gas-pipes ; but how woful and forlorn they
looked ! There was roast beef and plum-
pudding preparing at the fire-place ; but they
had neither the odour nor the appearance of
free beef and pudding. I was thinking of the
cosy room, the snug fire, the well-drawn
curtains, the glittering table, the happy faces,
when the turnkey introduced me to the steward
of the ward (an officer appointed by the
prisoners, and a prisoner himself) who " tables
you off"," i. e. who allotted me a seat at one
of the cross-tables, which was henceforward
mine for all purposes of eating, drinking,
writing, or smoking ; in consideration of a
payment on my part of one guinea sterling.
This sum made me also free of the ward, and
entitled to have my boots cleaned, my bed
made, and my meals cooked. Supposing that
I had not possessed a guinea (which was likely
60

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

enough), I should have asked for time, which
would have been granted me ; but, at the
expiration of three days, omission of payment
would have constituted me a defaulter ; in
which case, the best thing I could have done
would have been to declare pauperism, and
remove to the poor side of the prison. Here,
I should have been entitled to my "sixpences,"
amounting, in the aggregate, to the sum of
three shillings and sixpence a week towards
my maintenance.

The steward, a fat man in a green " wide-
awake " hat, who was incarcerated on remand
for the damages in an action for breach of
promise of marriage, introduced me to the
cook (who was going up next week to the
Insolvent Court, having filed his schedule as
a beer-shop keeper). He told me, that if I
chose to purchase anything at a species of
everything shop in the yard, the cook would
dress it ; or, if I did not choose to be at the
trouble of providing myself, I might break-
fast, dine, and sup at his, the steward's, table,
" for a consideration," as Mr. Trapbois has it.
I acceded to the latter proposition, receiving
the intelligence that turkey and oyster-sauce
were to be ready at two precisely, with melan-
choly indifference. Turkey had no charms
for me now.

I sauntered forth into the yard, and passed
fifty or sixty fellow-unfortunates, sauntering
61

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

as listlessly as myself. Strolling about, I came
to a large grating, somewhat similar to Mr.
Blowman's bird-cage, in which was a heavy
gate called the " lock," and which communi-
cated with the corridors leading to the exterior
of the prison. Here sat, calmly surveying his
caged birds within, a turnkey — not a repulsive,
gruff-voiced monster, with a red neckerchief
and top boots, and a bunch of keys, as turn-
keys are popularly supposed to be — but a
pleasant, jovial man enough, in sleek black.
He had a little lodge behind, where a bright
fire burned, and where Mrs. Turnkey and
the little Turnkeys lived. (I found a direful
resemblance between the name of his office,
and that of the Christmas bird). His Christ-
mas dinner hung to the iron bars above him,
in the shape of a magnificent piece of beef.
Happy turnkey, to be able to eat it on the
outer side of that dreadful grating ! In
another part of the yard hung a large black
board, inscribed in half-effaced characters,
with the enumerations of divers donations,
made in former times by charitable persons,
for the benefit in perpetuity of poor prisoners.
To-day, so much beef and so much strong beer
v/as allotted to each prisoner.

But what were beef and beer, what was

unlimited tobacco, or even the plum-pudding,

when made from prison plums, boiled in

a prison copper, and eaten in a prison dining-

62

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

room ? What though surreptitious gin were
carried in, in bladders, beneath the under-
garments of the fairer portion of creation ;
what though brandy were smuggled into the
wards, disguised as black draughts, or extract
of sarsaparilla ? A pretty Christmas market I
had brought my pigs to !

Chapel was over (I had come down too late
from the " Reception " to attend it) ; and the
congregation (a lamentably small one) dispersed
in the yard and wards. I entered my own
ward, to change (if anything could change) the
dreary scene.

Smoking and cooking appeared to be the
chief employments and recreations of the
prisoners. An insolvent clergyman in rusty
black was gravely rolling out puff-paste on a
pie-board ; and a man in his shirt-sleeves,
covering a veal cutlet with egg and breadcrum,
was an officer of dragoons !

I found no lack of persons willing to enter
into conversation with me. I talked, full
twenty minutes, with a seedy captive, with a
white head, and a coat buttoned and pinned
up to the chin.

Whitecross Street, he told me (or Burden's
Hotel, as in the prison slang he called it), was
the only place where any " life " was to be
seen. The Fleet was pulled down ; the
Marshalsea had gone the way of all brick-and-
mortar ; the Queen's Prison, the old " Bench,"

63

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

was managed on a strict system of classification
and general discipline ; and Horsemonger
Lane was but rarely tenanted by debtors ; but
in favoured Whitecross Street, the good old
features of imprisonment for debt yet flourished.
Good dinners were still occasionally given ;
" fives " and football were yet played j and,
from time to time, obnoxious attorneys, or
importunate process-servers — "rats" as they
were called — were pumped upon, floured, and
bonneted. Yet, even Whitecross Street, he
said with a sigh, was falling off. The Small
Debts Act and those revolutionary County
Courts would be too many for it soon.

That tall, robust, bushy- whiskered man (he
said) in the magnificently-flowered dressing-
gown, the crimson Turkish smoking-cap, the
velvet slippers, and the ostentatiously-displayed
gold guard-chain, was a " mace-man : " an
individual who lived on his wits, and on the
want of wit in others. He had had many
names, varying from Plantagenet and De
Courcy, to " Edmonston and Co.," or plain
Smith or Johnson. He was a real gentleman
once upon a time — a very long time ago.
Since then, he had done a little on the turf,
and a great deal in French hazard, roulette,
and rouge et noir. He had cheated bill-
discounters, and discounted bills himself. He
had been a picture-dealer, and a wine-merchant,
and one of those mysterious individuals called
64

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

a " commission agent." He had done a little
on the Stock Exchange, and a little billiard-
marking, and a little skittle-sharping, and a
little thimblerigging. He was not particular.
Bills, however, were his passion. He was
under a cloud just now, in consequence of
some bill-dealing transaction, which the Com-
missioner of Insolvency had broadly hinted to
be like a bill-stealing one. However, he had
wonderful elasticity, and it was to be hoped
would soon get over his little difficulties.
Meanwhile, he dined sumptuously, and smoked
cigars of price ; occasionally condescending to
toss half-crowns in a hat with any of the other
" nobs " incarcerated.

That cap, and the battered, worn-out, sickly
frame beneath (if I would have the goodness
to notice them), were all that were left of a
spruce, rosy-cheeked, glittering young ensign
of infantry. He was brought up by an old
maiden aunt, who spent her savings to buy
him a commission in the army. He went
from Slowchester Grammar School, to Fast-
chester Barracks. He was to live on his pay.
He gambled a year's pay away in an evening.
He made thousand guinea bets, and lost them.
So the old denouement of the old story came
round as usual. The silver dressing-case, got
on credit — pawned for ready money ; the
credit-horses sold ; more credit-horses bought ;
importunate creditors in the barrack-yard ; a.

6S F

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

letter from the colonel ; sale of his commission ;
himself sold up ; then Mr. Aminadab, Mr.
Blowman, Burdon's Hotel, Insolvent Court, a
year's remand ; and an after life embittered by
the consciousness of wasted time and talents,
and wantonly-neglected opportunities.

My informant pointed out many duplicates
of the gentleman in the dressing-gown. Also,
divers Government clerks, who had attempted
to imitate the nobs in a small way, and had
only succeeded to the extent of sharing the
same prison ; a mild grey-headed old gentle-
man who always managed to get committed
for contempt of court ; and the one inevitable
baronet of a debtor's prison, who is traditionally
supposed to have eight thousand a year, and to
stop in prison because he likes it — though, to
say the truth, this baronet looked, to me, as if
he didn't like it at all.

I was sick of all these, and of everything
else in Whitecross Street, before nine o'clock,
when I was at liberty to retire to my cold
ward. So ended my Christmas Day — my first,
and, I hope and believe, my last Christmas Day
in prison.

Next morning my welcome friend arrived
and set me free. I paid the gate-fees, and I
gave the turnkeys a crown, and I gave the
prisoners unbounded beer. I kept New Year's
Day in company with a pretty cousin with
glossy black hair, who was to have dined with
66

IN THE COMPANY OF JOHN DOE

me on Christmas Day, and who took such pity
on me that she shortly became Mrs. Prupper.
Our eldest boy was born, by a curious coinci-
dence, next Christmas Day — which I kept very
jovially, with the doctor, after it was all over,
and we didnt christen him Whitecross.

The Orphan's Dream of
Christmas

BY ELIZA GRIFFITHS

IT was Christmas Eve — and lonely,

By a garret window high,
Where the city chimneys barely

Spared a hand's-breadth of the sky,
Sat a child, in age, — but weeping,

With a face so small and thin,
That it seem'd too scant a record

To have eight years traced therein.

Oh, grief looks most distorted

When his hideous shadow lies
On the clear and sunny life-stream

That doth fill a child's blue eyes !
But her eye was dull and sunken,

And the whiten'd cheek was gaunt,
And the blue veins on the forehead

Were the pencilling of Want.

And she wept for years like jewels,
Till the last year's bitter gall,

Like the acid of the story,
In itself had melted all ;
68

THE ORPHAN'S DREAM

But the Christmas-time returned,
As an old friend, for whose eye

She would take down all the pictures
Sketched by faithful Memory,

Of those brilliant Christmas seasons,

When the joyous laugh went round ;
When sweet words of love and kindness

Were no unfamiliar sound ;
When, lit by the log's red lustre,

She her mother's face could see,
And she rock'd the cradle, sitting

On her own twin-brother's knee :

Of her father's pleasant stories ;

Of the riddles and the rhymes,
All the kisses and the presents

That had mark'd those Christmas-times.
'Twas as well that there was no one

(For it were a mocking strain)
To wish her a merry Christmas,

For that could not come again.

How there came a time of struggling,

When, in spite of love and faith,
Grinding Poverty would only

In the end give place to Death ;
How her mother grew heart-broken,

When her toil-worn father died,
Took her baby in her bosom,

And was buried by his side :
69

THE ORPHAN'S DREAM

How she clung unto her brother

As the last spar from the wreck,
But stern Death had come between them

While her arms were round his neck.
There were now no loving voices ;

And, if few hands offered bread,
There were none to rest in blessing

On the little homeless head.

Or, if any gave her shelter,

It was less of joy than fear ;
For they welcomed Crime more warmly

To the self-same room with her.
But, at length they all grew weary

Of their sick and useless guest ;
She must try a workhouse welcome

For the helpless and distressed.

But she prayed ; and the Unsleeping

In His ear that whisper caught ;
So He sent down Sleep, who gave her

Such a respite as she sought ;
Drew the fair head to her bosom,

Pressed the wetted eyelids close,
And, with softly-falling kisses,

Lulled her gently to repose.

Then she dreamed the angels, sweeping
With their wings the sky aside,

Raised her swiftly to the country
Where the blessed ones abide :

70

THE ORPHAN'S DREAM

To a bower all flushed with beauty,

By a shadowy arcade,
Where a mellowness like moonlight

By the Tree of Life was made :

Where the rich fruit sparkled, star-like,

And pure flowers of fadeless dye
Poured their fragrance on the waters

That in crystal beds went by :
Where bright hills of pearl and amber

Closed the fair green valleys round,
And, with rainbow light, but lasting,

Were their glistening summits crown'd

Then, that distant-burning glory,

'Mid a gorgeousness of light !
The long vista of Archangels

Could scarce chasten to her sight.
There sat One : and her heart told her

'Twas the same, who, for our sin,
Was once born a little baby

" In the stable of an inn."

There was music — oh, such music ! — -

They were trying the old strains
That a certain group of shepherds

Heard on old Judea's plains ;
But, when that divinest chorus

To a softened trembling fell,
Love's true ear discerned the voices

That on earth she loved so well.

THE ORPHAN'S DREAM

At a tiny grotto's entrance

A fair child her eyes behold,
With his ivory shoulders hidden

'Neath his curls of living gold ;
And he asks them, " Is she coming ? "

But ere any one can speak,
The white arms of her twin brother

Are once more about her neck.

Then they all come round her greeting ;

But she might have well denied
That her beautiful young sister

Is the poor pale child that died ;
And the careful look hath vanish'd

From her father's tearless face,
And she does not know her mother

Till she feels the old embrace.

Oh, from that ecstatic dreaming

Must she ever wake again,
To the cold and cheerless contrast, —

To a life of lonely pain ?
But her Maker's sternest servant

To her side on tiptoe stept ;
Told his message in a whisper, —

And she stirr'd not as she slept !

Now the Christmas morn was breaking

With a dim, uncertain hue,
And the chilling breeze of morning

Came the broken window through ;
72

THE ORPHAN'S DREAM

And the hair upon her forehead,
Was it lifted by the blast,

Or the brushing wings of Seraphs,
With their burden as they pass'd ?

All the festive bells were chiming

To the myriad hearts below ;
But that deep sleep still hung heavy

On the sleeper's thoughtful brow.
To her quiet face the dream-light

Had a lingering glory given j
But the child herself was keeping

Her Christmas Day in Heaven !

73

What Christmas Is after a
Long Absence

BY SAMUEL SIDNEY

SIXTEEN years have passed since, a turbu-
lent, discontented boy, I left England for
Australia. My first serious study of geo-
graphy began when I twirled about a great
globe to find South Australia, which was then
the fashionable colony. My guardians — I
was an orphan — were delighted to get rid
of so troublesome a personage ; so, very soon
I was the proud possessor of a town and
country lot of land in the model colony of
South Australia.

My voyage in a capital ship, with the best
fare every day, and no one to say " Charles,
you have had enough wine," was pleasant
enough : very different from the case of some
of my emigrating companions — fathers and
mothers with families, who had left good
homes, good incomes, snug estates, and re-
spectable professions, excited by speeches at
public meetings, or by glowing pamphlets,

74

CHRISTMAS, AFTER ABSENCE

descriptive of the charms of a colonial life in
a model colony. I learned to smoke, drink
grog, and hit a bottle swung from the yard-
arm with pistol or rifle. We had several
very agreeable scamps on board ; ex-cornets
and lieutenants, ex-government clerks, spoiled
barristers and surgeons, plucked Oxonians, —
empty, good-looking, well-dressed fellows, who
had smoked meerschaums, drunk Champagne,
Hock, and Burgundy, fought duels, ridden
steeple-chases, and contracted debts in every
capital in Europe. These distinguished gentle-
men kindly took me under their patronage,
smoked my cigars, allowed me to stand treat
for Champagne, taught me, at some slight
expense, the arts of short whist, ecartey and
unlimited loo ; and to treat with becoming
hauteur any advances on the part of the inter-
mediate passengers.

By the end of one hundred days of our
voyage I was remarkably altered, but whether
improved may be a question ; as the leading
principles I had imbibed were to the effect
that work of any kind was low, and that debts
were gentlemanly. My preconceived notions
of a model colony, with all the elements of
civilisation, as promised in London, were rather
upset, by observing, on landing, just within the
wash of high-water, on the sandy beach, heaps
of furniture, a grand piano or two, and chests
of drawers in great numbers ; and I especially

75

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

remember a huge iron-banded oak plate-chest,
half full of sand, and empty. The cause of
this wholesale abandonment was soon made
plain to me, in the shape of a charge of ten
pounds for conveying my trunks in a bullock
waggon, of which they formed less than half
the load, seven miles from the port to the
city of Adelaide ; — the said city, which looked
so grand in water colours in the Emigration
Rooms in London, being at that time a
picturesque and uncomfortable collection of
tents, mud huts, and wooden cottages, curiously
warped, rather larger than a Newfoundland
dog's kennel, but letting for the rent of a
mansion in any agricultural county of England.
It is not my intention, now, to tell the tale
of the fall of the Model Colony and colonists
of South Australia, and the rise of the Copper
Mines, which I did not stay to see. When
a general smash was taking place on all sides,
I accepted the offer of a rough diamond of an
overlander, who had come across from the
old colony with a lot of cattle and horses to
sell to the Adelaideans. He had taken a
fancy to me in consequence of the skill I had
displayed in bleeding a valuable colt at a
critical moment ; one of the few useful things
I had learned in England ; and, when my
dashing companions were drinking themselves
into delirium tremens, enlisting in the police,
accepting situations as shepherds, sponging for
76

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

dinners on the once-despised "snobs" and
imploring the captains of ships to let them
work their way home before the mast, he
offered to take me with him to his station in
the interior, and "make a man of me." I
turned my back on South Australia, and
abandoned my country lot, on an inaccessible
hill, to nature, and sold my town lot for five
pounds. I began to perceive that work was
the only means of getting on in a colony.

Accordingly, into the far Bush I went, and
on the plains of a new-settled district, all
solitary , constantly in danger from savage
blacks ; constantly occupied in looking after
the wild shepherds and stockmen (herdsmen)
of my overland friend ; passing days on
horseback at one period ; at another, com-
pelled to give my whole attention to the
details of a great establishment, — I rubbed off
my old skin.

My fashionable affectations died away ; my
life became a reality, dependent on my own
exertions. It was then that my heart began
to change ; it was then that I began to think
tenderly of the brothers and sisters I had left
behind, and with whom I had communicated
so little in the days of my selfishness. Rarely
oftener than twice in a year could I find
means to forward letters ; but the pen, once
so hateful to me, became now, in hours of
leisure, my great resource. Often and often

77

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

have I sat in my hut at midnight, filling pages
with my thoughts, my feelings, my regrets.
The fire burning before my hut, where my
men were sleeping, reminded me that I was
not alone in the great pastoral desert, which
sloping away from my station, rolled for
hundreds of miles. Every sound was redolent
of the romance of the strange land to which I
had transplanted myself. The howl of the
dingo prowling round my sheep-folds ; the
defying bark of my watchful dogs ; the cry
of the strange night-birds ; and sometimes,
echoing from the rocky ranges, the wild
mountainous songs of the fierce aborigines, as
they danced their corrobberies, and acted
dramas representing the slaughter of the white
man, and the plunder of his cattle. When
such noises met my ear, I looked up to the
rack where my arms lay, ready loaded, and
out to where a faithful sentinel, the rebel
O'Donohue, or the poacher, Giles Brown,
with musket on shoulder paced up and down,
ready to die, but not to surrender. In this
great desert, the petty cares, mean tricks of
land jobbing, all the little contrivances for
keeping up appearances no longer needed,
were forgotten. My few books were not
merely read ; they were learned by heart. If
in the morning I tired horses in galloping my
rounds, and settled strife among my men with
rude words, and even blows ; in the evening,
73

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

sitting apart, I was lost in the wanderings of
Abraham, the trials of Job, or the Psalms of
David.

I followed St. John into the wilderness, not
unlike that before my eyes, and listened far
from cities to the Sermon on the Mount. At
other times, as I paced along the open forests,
I made the woods resound with the speeches
of Homer's heroes, or the outbursts of Shak-
speare's characters — outbursts that came home
to me : for, in those lone regions, I was chief,
warrior, and almost priest ; for, when there
was a death, I read the funeral service. And
thus I educated myself.

While thus recalling friends neglected, and
opportunities misused, and pleasant scenes of
Eastern county life, I most loved to dwell
upon the Christmas-time of dear old England.

In our hot summer of Australian December,
when the great river that divided and bounded
my pastures drivelled to a string of pools, and
my cattle were panting around — at the quiet
hour of the evening, when the stars, shining
with a brilliancy unknown in northern climes,
realised the idea of the blessed night when the
star of Bethlehem startled and guided the
kings of the Eastern world on their pious
pilgrimage, — my thoughts travelled across the
sea to England. I did not feel the sultry
heat, or hear the cry of the night-bird or
the howl of the dingo. I was across the sea,

79

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

among the Christmas revellers. I saw the
gay flushed faces of my kindred and friends
shining round the Christmas table ; the grace
was said, the toast went round. I heard my
own name mentioned, and the gay faces grew
sad. Then I awoke from my dream and
found myself alone, and wept. But in a life
of action there is no time for useless grieving,
though time enough for reflection and resolu-
tion. Therefore, after visions like these, I
resolved that the time should come when, on
a Christmas Day, the toast " to absent friends "
should be answered by the Australian himself.

The time did come — this very year of
the half-century. Earnest labour and sober
economy had prospered with me. The rich
district in which I was one of the earliest
pioneers, had become settled and pacified,
as far as the river ran ; the wild Myals had
grown into the tame, blanket-clothed de-
pendents of the settlers. Thousands of fine-
woolled flocks upon the hills, and cattle upon
the rich flats, were mine ; the bark hut had
changed into a verandahed cottage, where
books and pictures formed no insignificant
part of the furniture ; neighbours were within
a ride ; the voices of children often floated
sweetly along the waters of the river.

Then said I to myself, I can return now.
Not to remain ; for the land I have conquered
from the wilderness shall be my home for
80

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

life : but I will return, to press the hands
that have longed for many years to press
mine ; to kiss away the tears that dear sisters
shed when they think of me, once almost an
outcast ; to take upon my knees those little
ones who have been taught to pray for their
" uncle in a far land across the broad, deep
sea." Perhaps I had a thought of winning
some rosy English face and true English heart
to share my pastoral home.

I did return, and trod again the shores of
my mother country. My boyish expectations
had not been realised, but better hopes had.
I was not returning laden with treasures, to
rival the objects of my foolish youthful vanity;
but I was returning thankful, grateful, con-
tented, independent, to look round once more
on my native land, and then return to settle
in the land of my adoption.

It was mid-winter when I landed at a small
fishing village in the extreme west of England ;
for my impatience made me take advantage,
during a calm in the Channel, of the first
fisher's boat that boarded us.

The nearer we approached the shore, the
more impatient I grew to land. I insisted on
giving my help to one of the heavy oars ; and
no sooner had we touched the ground, than,
throwing myself into the water, I waded
on shore. Oh, easy-going men of the great
world, there are some pleasures you can never
81 G

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

taste ; and among them is the enthusiasm,
the heartfelt, awe-stricken admiration of the
dweller among pastoral plains when he finds
himself once more at home among the gardens
of England !

Garden is the only word to express the
appearance of England, especially the west,
where the bright green myrtle lingers through
the winter, and the road-side near every town
is bordered with charming cottages. At
every mile I found some new object of
admiration, above all, the healthful fresh
cheeks of the people ; especially the sturdy,
yet delicate-complexioned lasses tripping away,
basket in hand, from the markets in numbers,
startling to one who had lived long where the
arrival of one fair white face was an event.

The approach to the first great town was
signalised by tokens less pleasing — nay, abso-
lutely painful ; — beggars, as I passed, stood
in their rags and whined for alms ; and others,
not less pitiful in appearance, did not beg, but
looked so wan and miserable, that it made my
heart bleed. I gave to all, so that the man
who drove me stared. He stared still more
when I told him that I came from a country
where there were no poor, save the drunken
and the idle.

Entering a great town, the whirl, the com-
motion of passers on foot, on horseback, and in
vehicles of all kinds, made me giddy ; it was
82

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

like a sort of nightmare. The signs of wealth,
the conveniences provided for every imaginable
want, were very strange to me, fresh from a
country where able-bodied labour was always
in demand, while a man thought himself
equal to the longest journey, through an un-
trodden country, with a blanket and a tin-pot
for all his furniture, and all his cooking
apparatus.

When I called in the landlord of the inn to
consult about getting on to Yorkshire in two
days, as I wished to be with my friends as soon
as possible, he said, " If you stay and rest
to-night, you can get there by the railroad to-
morrow morning, in good time to eat your
Christmas dinner." I had never thought of
that, and had only a vague idea what a rail-
road was like.

I reached the starting-place next morning,
just in time to take my seat in a departing
train. I started when, with a fearful sound of
labouring machinery, we moved : then whirled
away. I was ashamed of my fears ; yet there
were many in that train to whom a sea voyage
would have only been less terrible than the
solitary land journeys on horseback through
the Bush of Australia, which were to me a
mere matter of course. Without accident, I
reached the station near York, where I had
to take a conveyance to reach by a cross
country road the house where I knew that

83

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

one of my brothers, farming a few hundred
acres of his own land, assembled as many of
our family as possible at Christmas-time.

The little inn was able to supply a gig, driven
by a decayed post-boy. Plunging at once
into questioning conversation, I found an old
acquaintance in the driver, without revealing
who I was. Not many years older than my-
self, soured, disappointed, racked in health,
he took a different view of life to anything I
had yet heard. All along my road through
England I had been struck by the prosperous
condition of the well-to-do people I had met
in first-class carriages. His occupation, his
glory, was departed ; he was obliged to do
anything, and wear anything, instead of his
once smart costume, and once pleasant occu-
pation— instead of his gay jacket, and rapid
ride, and handsome presents from travellers,
and good dinners from landlords. In doleful
spirits, he had a score of tales to tell of
others worse off than himself — of landlords of
posting-houses in the workhouse, and smart
four-in-hand coachmen begging their bread —
of farmers sunk down to labourers j and other
doleful stories of the fate of those who were
not strong enough for the race of life in
England. Then I began to see there are
two sides to the life that looked so brilliant
out of the plate-glass windows of a first-class
carriage.

84

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

The luxuries and comforts which taxes and
turnpikes buy, are well worth the cost to those
who can pay them ; those who cannot, will do
better to make shift in a colony. Thus think-
ing and talking, as I approached the place
where, unexpected, I was to appear before a
gathering of my relations, my flow of spirits
died away. The proud consciousness of having
conquered fortune, the beauty of the winter
scenery (for winter, with its hoar frost shading
the trees and foliage, has strange dazzling
beauty to the eyes of those who have been
accustomed to the one perpetual green-brown
of semi-tropical Australia) had filled me full
to overflowing with bounding joyousness.
Gaily I answered back to the "Good-night,
master," of the passing peasantry, and vigor-
ously puffed at my favourite pipe, in clouds
that rivalled and rolled along with the clouds
of mist that rose from the sweating horses.
But the decayed postilion's stories of misery,
in which he seemed to revel, damped me. My
pipe went out, and my chin sunk despond-
ingly on my breast. At length I asked, " Did
he know the Barnards ? " " Oh, yes, he knew
them all." Mr. John had been very lucky
with the railroad through one of his farms.
He had ridden a pair at Miss Margaret's
wedding, and driven a mourning-coach at
Miss Mary's funeral. The mare in the gig
had belonged to Mr. John, and had been a

85

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

rare good hunter. Mr. Robert had doctored
him for his rheumatics. " Did he know any
more ? " " Oh, yes ; there was Master Charles ;
he went abroad somewhere to furren parts.
Some people say he's dead, got killed, or
hung, or something ; and some say he's made
a power of money. He was a wild slip of a
lad. Many a time he's been out in the roads
with some one I know very well, snaring
hares and smoking of pheasants. There's a
mark on my forehead now, where I fell, when
he put a furze bush under the tail of a colt I
was breaking. He was a droll chap, surely."
There was scarcely a kind feeling in the poor
man's breast. The loss of his occupation,
poverty, and drink, had sadly changed the fine
country lad, barely ten years older than my-
self, whom I had left behind in England. So,
turning, I said, "Well, Joe, you don't seem
to remember me ; I am Charles Barnard."
" Lord, sir ! " he answered, in a whining tone,
" I beg your pardon. You are a great gentle-
man j I always thought you would be. So
you are going to dine with Mr. John ? Well,
sir, I hope you won't forget a Christmas-box,
for old acquaintance sake ? " I was repelled,
and wished myself back in Australia ; my
mind began to misgive me as to the wisdom of
my unexpected visit.

It was bright moonlight when we drove
into the village. I had a mile to walk ; I

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

would not let chattering Joe drive me ; so left
him happy over a hot supper, with no stinted
allowance of ale. I walked on quickly, until
approaching the old house — the mansion-
house, once, but the estates had long been
divided from it — I paused. My courage
failed as I passed through the gate ; their
clang disturbed the dogs — they began to bark
fiercely. I was a stranger ; the dogs that
knew me were all dead. Twice I paced
round, with difficulty repressing my emotion,
before I could find courage to approach the
door. The peals of laughter, the gay music
that rang out from time to time, the lights
flying from window to window of the upper
rooms, filled me with pleasing-painful feelings,
long unknown. There was folly in my mys-
terious arrival ; but romance is part of a life
of solitude. Unreasonably, I was for a moment
vexed that they could be so merry ; but next
moment better thoughts prevailed. I stepped
to the well-remembered door, and rang a great
peal ; the maid opened it to me without
question, for many guests were expected. As
I stooped to lay aside my cloak and cap, a
lovely child in white ran down the stairs,
threw her arms round my neck, and, with a
hearty kiss, cried, " I have caught you under
the mistletoe, cousin Alfred." Then she
started from me, and loosening her hold, and
staring at me with large timid brown eyes,

87

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

said, — " Who are you ? you are not a new
uncle, are you ? " Oh, how my heart was
relieved ! the child saw a likeness ; I should
not be disowned. All my plans, all my pre-
parations were forgotten ; I was in the midst
of them ; and after fifteen years I saw again
the Christmas fire, the Christmas table, the
Christmas faces, that I had dreamed of so
often ! To describe that night is impossible.
Long after midnight, we sat ; the children
unwillingly left my knees for bed ; my
brothers gazed and wondered ; my sisters
crowded round me, kissed my brown-bearded
cheeks, and pressed my sun-burned hands.
Many new scenes of blessed Christmas may
I have ; never one like that which welcomed
the wanderer home !

But although England has its blessed seasons
and festivals, in which Christmas Day stands
first ; and, although that Christmas meeting
will often and again be before my eyes, I
cannot stay in England. My life is moulded
to my adopted country j and where I have
earned fortune, there I will spend it. The
restraints, the conventionalities, the bonds
created by endless divisions of society, are
more than I can endure ; care seems to sit
on every brow, and scornful pride in imaginary
social superiority on too many.

I have found the rosy English face, and the
true English heart ! Some one who listened to
88

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE

the Australian stories of my Christmas week,
which my friends were never tired of hearing,
is ready to leave all and follow me to my
pastoral home. I am now preparing for
departure ; and neither society, nor books,
nor music, will be wanting in what was,
when I first knew it, a forest and grassy desert,
peopled with wild birds and kangaroos.
Nearly twenty relations accompany me ;
some of them poor enough. In a few years
you may find the Barnard-town settlement
on Australian maps ; and there, at Christmas-
time, or any time, true men and good women
shall meet with welcome and help from me,
for I shall never forget that I once began the
world, a shepherd in a solitude, and gazed on
the bright stars of a Christmas night, shining
in a hot and cloudless sky.

What Christmas Is if You
Outgrow It

BY T. W. A. BUCKLEY

THE floods round the little classic town of
Bulferry were frozen. The trees round the
meadows of St. Agnus Dei de Pompadour
were the same. Dons went to chapel regularly,
but the Dean of St. Agnus appeared in an
extensive funeral-looking cloak, and the Sub-
Dean coughed louder, and made more mis-
takes in the responses, by reason of deafness,
than heretofore. Coal and Blanket Societies
were talked of. In few words, Christmas was
fast approaching, and University men were
looking forward to spending that season in
town or country, according to their residence,
inclinations, or invitations.

Among the many young men who stood
on the platform, awaiting the blazing dragon,
which in two hours' time was to convey them
to London, perhaps to take a chop at the
" Cock," a little dinner at Verrey's, and a three-
and-sixpenny cab-fare to some other station,
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CHRISTMAS IF YOU OUTGROW IT

was Mr. Horace De Lisle, a freshman, who
had come "up" in the preceding October,
and was now hastening back to the paternal
hearth at St. Maurice, a charming little
vicarage in Warwickshire, just large enough
to be the best house in the village, just small
enough to be sociable, allowing of half-a-dozen
spare beds. Practically religious, without
any morbid affectation of any " isms," the
Rev. Augustus De Lisle was the best and
most popular parson for miles round. His
income might be some four hundred a year,
besides a little property in the funds ; but
judicious economy, and a little success in
"gentleman farming," made it go very far,
and St. Maurice rectory boasted its occasional
dinner-party, its billiard-room, and its plain
carriage ; while few of the poor or sick ever
went away unrelieved. Mrs. De Lisle was a
good and clever woman, and educated her own
daughters ; which saved money and morals at
the same time.

However, like the generality of clergymen
who have not much preferment, and who
really do good, the Rev. Augustus De Lisle
had a large family. Girls, even when edu-
cated at home, cost something ; boys cost a
great deal more, and cannot be kept at home.
Two or three had been got off his hands, but
Horace had been a pet boy, kept at home a
good deal through ill-health. He was very

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

amiable, loved his sisters and mother, and his
father had made him a capital scholar. Several
people were surprised when he took the St.
Agnus Dei scholarship, and took the " bounce "
out of the Tipton and Whortleberry boys at
the same time.

And so Horace had been sent to the Uni-
versity, with the promise of eighty or a
hundred pounds a year from his father, an
odd present of fifty from an aunt, and a lot of
tears, blessings, and hints at advice from his
mother. He had now passed his first term.
He had made up his mind to take a " double
first," the Iceland scholarship, and the English
verse ; he found Arnold's Thucydides a very
stupid book, and wondered how it was that
nothing " took " in the publishing way, unless
it was " translated from the German." He
believed in "stunning feeds," and began to
have some ideas on the subject of claret.

But he had still far too much love for home
to find even a lingering inclination for a further
stay. Moreover, ambition seemed to send him
homeward. The Dean had said, in a gruff
voice, " Very well, sir ! " to his construing of
the " Birds" of Aristophanes ; the Rev. John
o' Gaunt, his tutor, had expanded his lank lips
into a smile, and had commended his Latinity ;
and here was news for his father ! Again,
he wanted to see Jack Harrowgate, his old
shooting companion, to whom his favourite
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IF YOU OUTGROW IT

sister Lucy was engaged. Jack was a tre-
mendous, rough, manly fellow, with a very
kind heart, and great powers of sociability.
Even Bruiser, of St. Alb-Cornice, who had
thrashed the " Bunstead Grinder," shrank
into insignificance when compared with Jack ;
and Smillington, of St. Una de Lion, could
not sing " Down among the dead men " half
so well. Besides all this, Horace had some
few private anxieties and doubts — of which
anon.

Great as was the readiness and frequency
with which slang phrases were bandied to
and fro at the University, there was one little
word which seemed more in use than any,
and which half the University appeared to
be living to illustrate.

When Horace first appeared at St. Agnus
Dei, one of his first proceedings was to pay
for his furniture ; and to purchase the good-
will of the cups and saucers of the last
inmate of his rooms. Several other ready-
money transactions, on a small scale, evinced
his desire and intention of avoiding debt ;
and as his father had not only advised him to
do so, but had furnished him with the means
of eking out the small allowance of his
scholarship, he himself felt ill-justified in
overrunning his known income.

But that word was sounding, ringing,
dinning, and booming in his ears, hour after

93

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

hour, day after day. That word was staring
in his face ; whizzing before his eyes ; insinu-
ating itself into his food ; adulterating the
wine he drank. It stared at him in the form
of one man's boots (so much better fitting
than old Last's, at St. Maurice) ; in the broad
stripe of another man's elegantly-cut trousers ;
in the glossy hat of another ; in the faultless,
close-to-the-waist-when-unbuttoned dress coat
of another. It took all sorts of forms. It
would transfer itself into a walking-cane, at
one end of a street ; and at the end of
another, it had suddenly become a plaid scarf,
or a coral-headed breast-pin. Sometimes it
would appear as a Yorkshire pie ; sometimes
as a musical box. At one moment, just as
he thought it was a pair of hair-brushes, it
would suddenly turn itself into a steak and
oyster-sauce at Cliften's. In the dreams of
men, it would haunt them ; in their walks, it
would cling to their very feet ; in their
reading moments, it lay open before them ;
in their smoking ones, it fumed with them.
And that word was tick, tick, TICK.

But Horace was not in debt. Oh no ! He
had only commenced a few accounts for
things which " one could not very well pay for
till the end of term ; " and when the end of
term came, he found he was obliged to write
home for five pounds to come home with, and
this, as it was his first term, his father thought

94

IF YOU OUTGROW IT

nothing of. Then, he had " been obliged " to
order "one or two things" at Stilty and
Cabbagenet, the great tailor's ; but there could
be no harm in that, because their names were
put down on the list of tradesmen his tutor
had handed him. Then, there were one or two
little presents for his sisters, and a ring and
a new watch-chain, which " he could pay for
next term," and one or two other matters —
but " nothing of consequence."

If you had seen how Horace kissed his
sisters and mother, and how happy and how
jolly he seemed when he got home, you would
have been pleased, I think. He was certainly
more manly in speech and manner, and
more confident in expressing opinions ; but
he had lost none of his social frankness and
good-nature. But Christmas was getting
close at hand, and Horace, somehow or other,
did not evince so lively an interest in the
preparations for it as formerly. He said
something in reference to " their always boring
about mince-meat ; " and he thought the
charity-school dinner might be managed
cheaper and with less trouble at the school-
house, than in their own kitchen.

Moreover, his father could scarcely under-
stand the necessity of his reading in a bright-
coloured chintz gown, lined with bright red
silk, although his sisters thought it very
pretty. His mother was afraid that his set of

95

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

studs, representing little bunches of jewelled
grapes, must have been rather expensive —
" But then, he had always been a quiet boy at
home, and would not do so again." He also
drank more wine, and once laughed about
" boys taking two glasses of port after dinner ; "
he ordered some pale ale up from London ;
and abused tea as ditch-water, alleging that it
hurt his nerves, and prevented him from read-
ing. He called his pony a " mere hack," and
showed discrimination in matters relating to
horse-flesh.

But all these were minor difficulties, and
Horace had too much real goodness of heart
to ask his father for more money, or to
obtrude his artificial wants — except in fits of
occasional peevishness. Besides, the Bishop
of St. Epps was so pleased with his debut at
St. Agnus Dei, that he had obtained for him
an " exhibition," which put another thirty
pounds a year into his pocket. This comforted
him on the score of his present experiments
with TICK.

Christmas passed away, merrily. The house
was a perfect bower of holly j good, whole-
some dinners, and lively, hearty parties in
the evening, "kept" the St. Maurice Christ-
mas in genuine, downright style. And then
came more junketing. Laura, thinking that
there was no particular occasion to run away
to the Lakes, as if marriage were a wicked

IF YOU OUTGROW IT

action, said " yes " one evening to a curious
question of Jack Harrington's, and absolutely
got married next week. You may fancy what
everybody said and did upon that occasion !

And now came the time for Horace to
go back. Despite the domesticity of home,
despite the absence of cold ducks at break-
fast, of claret after dinner, and of lobster salad
for supper — despite the rough want of eti-
quette, which led Jack Harrington to dance
with his own wife, to prefer the ale of the
St. Maurice and the Goat to Bass or All-
sopp, and to drink healths at his own dinner-
parties,— Horace had not found so sincere, or
so soundly rational a companion at college.
He went back — and with some regrets.

It is a full three years, perhaps a trifle more,
since Horace spent Christmas at his parental
home. Many changes have taken place in
that time. Laura is getting matronly on the
strength of baby Number Two. Jack is get-
ting additionally serious ; looks more sharply
after business ; and gives fewer (though not
less sociable) parties. The Reverend the Vicar
of St. Maurice has got a small prebend, with
the profits of which, he has insured his life in
favour of three yet unmarried daughters. This
Christmas at St. Maurice bids fair to rival
all past Christmases in jollity, merriment,
and social delight. Jack has just cleared
97 H

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

a few hundreds by a lucky hit of judicious
speculation, and declares he will spare no
expense in celebrating baby Number One's
second birthday, which falls on Boxing
Day.

But where is Horace ? Will he be as sociable
as he used to be ? Will he come up a prodigy
of scholarship and good-nature, half a don,
yet with a whole and a sound heart ? The
train is expected ; crowds are waiting on the
platform, just as they waited this time three
years since, and — Horace is among them.

But which is Horace ? It cannot be that
young gentleman with haughty looks, a deli-
cately-robust or robustly-delicate figure, a
bundle of whips in his hand, and two Scotch
terriers held in with a string ! It cannot be
that white-over-coated, crushed-hatted, striped-
shirted individual ! And yet it is he too. With
whom is he talking ? It cannot be — yes ! it is,
it must be — the Honourable Charley Cracker.
Where are they going ? Surely Horace will
go direct home ? We doubt it.

Arrived in London — a little dinner at some
West End house — beat up Sprigs, now in the
1 2th. Two or three fellows that the Honour-
able Charley Cracker knows — Horace must
know them. " De Lisle, of St. Agnus Dei,"
"Permit me to introduce you to my friend
Sprigs, formerly of St. Walnuts De Grove —
capital fellow — only sent away for smashing
98

IF YOU OUTGROW IT

the college pump (this in an aside). Adjourn
to the Lyceum — farce getting slow — so on to
the Claret Cup, to hear Mr. Pope sing the
« Cross Bones " and « O, Mrs. Manning ! "
Get tired, so on again to the Parthenon Saloon
— no dancing — only look on — feel seedy —
soda-water and brandy too light ; pale ale,
squeamish ; porter, too heavy ; and so to bed
at Jarrett's Hotel. Headache — late hours in
the morning — fish breakfast at Greenwich —
rather better — u may as well go home in a day
or two as now," &c., &c.

A day or two is soon gone. Horace thinks
he may as well go and "look in at the
governor ; " and so he leaves the Honourable
Charley Cracker. Honourable Charley Cracker
is not a rogue or a sharper. He is merely an
ass. He is a pupil of Horace De Lisle besides,
who has taken to " coaching," and is open to
any eligible offer with which ten or seventeen
pounds a term is connected. He quits London
with a sigh, takes out his purse with another,
and a deeper sigh.

Laura is as pretty a young mamma as you
will meet in a long summer-day's walk, and
Horace cannot help thinking so. But he
don't like babies ; and baby Number One
has taken alarm at his handsomest terrier,
and is squalling energetically. Jack's old-
fashioned house, with the window-door open-
ing into a little snuggery of flowers and

99

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

vegetables, is very different to Lady De Mont-
faucon's conservatory, where he used to play
chess, smoke cigars, and sometimes read, with
his last long vacation pupil, the future Earl
of Spitalfields. At home it is much the
same. There is not so much as a bottle of
hock in the whole cellar ; they will let the
cat sleep on the rug in the dining-room, and
the carriage is the same old-fashioned " tub "
as ever.

However, he gets over baby's birthday
tolerably well, although he wishes Jack didn't
know so many farmers. Besides, Jack will
nurse baby Junior himself, and w ill hawk out
baby Senior to shake his diminutive fists,
at new-comers in general. He feels glad to
get back again to the rectory, but it is very
slow there. His father doesn't know the
Montmorencies, nor the Honourable Charley
Cracker, and wonders why he did not get the
fellowship at St. Swithin. Furthermore, Bessy
and Fanny have both got beaux, and the beaux
are not University men. Tom Harris, the
surgeon, would never do to introduce to the
Honourable Charley, although Tom has a
snug little practice, and has furnished his
house in a style that will outlast half a thou-
sand University friendships, and will make
Bessy a thoroughly good husband. Fanny's
intended is the new curate, who is not over
High Church ; in fact, Horace thinks him
100

IF YOU OUTGROW IT

rather a " pump," and wonders how he can
live upon a hundred and twenty pounds a
year.

Horace owes a few odd hundred pounds ;
but Standish and Co. and Stilty and Cab-
bagenet are very quiet as yet, and he will give
them a " few pounds " as soon as he can spare
it. In fact, half the bills have not yet been
sent in, for his debts are mostly of latter-day
University growth. He has done respectably
well in the school, but nothing more. He
has, however, a large connexion, picks up
pupils, and does hope to pick up some-
thing else : indefinitely oscillating between
the living of Dumdum, in the gift of the
Montmorency family (his scholarship will give
him a title) ; something under Government
(he knows the Prime Minister's aunt's second
cousin) ; and the Woolsack. But all his
friends, who used to hear him decide the fate
of the Continent in a speech of twenty
minutes, at the Vox et prater ea Nihil Associ-
ation, fill him with notions of briefs, oyster
breakfasts, and the Temple. The difficulty
is, the money. Cold-blooded as he is grown
to home associations, he has no heart to rob
Bessy and Fanny of the few hundreds their
father can give with them ; still less to stint
the younger members of their just meed of
what he has himself enjoyed. But he is an
unhappy creature. He wants everything and
101

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS

everybody — except the things and people
around him ; he is reserved where he used to
be open, parsimonious from necessity where he
was once generous. He cannot settle to any-
thing, and the few days he has been at home
have bored him as much as the conversation
of the Honourable Charley would have bored
his father. Other people perceive the change,
and even he begins to have a glimpse of self-
reproach.

But, just as he is wondering why the deuce
he thought of spending Christmas at home,
a reprieve arrives in the shape of a letter from
the Honourable Charley ; who, having in an
evil hour accepted an invitation to his guar-
dian's, finds he has nobody to smoke or drink
pale ale with, and conceives a sudden desire
for reading. The pay is liberal ; and, if it
were not, getting away from home for the
remaining nine or ten days of the vacation
would be a fair equivalent for any amount of
instruction likely to be imbibed by the mental
absorbents of Charley's mind.

Mrs. De Lisle cannot bear the idea of her
" dear boy " leaving home before even the
pudding is finished, especially as Jack Har-
rington has invited the whole family to keep
Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night at Jack's !
Noisy children, country dances, perhaps snap-
dragon, and perhaps blind-man's-buff, with
sisters Bessy and Fanny slipping out on the

102

IF YOU OUTGROW IT

staircase, and coming in with heightened
complexions, looking as if they had been
kissed by goblins in human shape. Twelfth
Night characters, too ! Perhaps draw a love
motto with Polly Bright, the old half-pay
admiral's daughter, about whom he once liked
to be teased. Never !

And so Horace goes away. His father,
perhaps, feels but little grieved ; for he hopes
and thinks that his son's journey may tend to
his future advantage, and he is too sensible to
cherish that home-sickness which sometimes
prevents a man from ever making a home for
himself. But his mother cannot bear his sub-
lime disdain of all the little innocent things
that once called forth his highest approbation.
She is almost afraid Polly Bright looks thin
and anxious ; and she remembers that, just
three years ago, Horace joked about his " little
wife ; " and she wishes that, even by one kind
look, he had repeated the joke. It is all one
to Horace, who is gone.

To be happy, Horace, or to be really
merry ? My friend, my friend, a word in
your ear ! You may be quite sure that you
have grown too fast, when you find that you
have outgrown Christmas. It is a very bad
sign indeed.

103

The Round Game of the
Christmas Bowl

BY R. H. HORNE

[THIS Round Game, which comes, origin-
ally, from Fairy-Land, is thus played. The
Pool of the game is a capacious circular bowl,
or basin, made of ice. It is some sixty or
seventy feet in circumference, and all round
the rim there is stuck a hedge of holly-boughs,
in full berry, interspersed with coloured lamps
and silver bells. Everybody who is inspired
by Christmas festivities comes to put into the
Pool. He is to put in something which is his
pride. In doing this he generally throws in
something which is equally his trouble ; and
thus, by doing a generous act at Christmas, in
throwing away his pride, he at the same time
gets rid of one of his worst troubles.]

THE RHYME

HERE is a Pool, all made of ice,

For a great round Christmas Game !

Its rim is set with green holly-boughs,
And lamps of colour'd flame ;
104

GAME OF THE CHRISTMAS BOWL

With silver bells that tinkle and gingle
As each one his offering comes to mingle, —
Whether ingot of gold, or a grey sea shingle.
Who comes first ? — 'Tis the King, I declare,
With the crown in his hand, and the frost in

his hair !
Close to the Pool he brings his crown,

And tosses it o'er the holly !
So, away to the bottom goes all his pride,
And his royal melancholy ;
While gingle ! tinkle ! gingle !

How the sweet bells ring !
And round about the lighted Pool
We gambol, dance, and sing !

Who comes next ? —

'Tis a Minister of State,
With a Puzzle made of weights and wheels,

And balanced on his pate !
To the Pool of Christmas Offerings

The Treasury Lord advances ;
Souse over, goes his Puzzle,

And away his Lordship dances !
While gingle ! tinkle ! gingle !

How the sweet bells ring !
And round about the lighted Pool
We gambol, dance, and sing !

Who comes next ?

'Tis the First Gold Stick !
With the First Cock'd Hat !

And the First General Brick !

THE ROUND GAME OF THE

In the Pool they toss their darlings —
Sword — hat — stick — garniture !

And retire to the allegro
Of the Minuet de la Cour !

But while they caper back,

Three Slaves-to-Dress advance,
In splendid, killing curls and rouge, —
The last bright thought of France !
They say — " 'Tis Christmas-time j

To the Round Game we will come ;
Let us throw away our fashions,

And — for once — ' let's look at home ! ' "
While glngle ! tinkle ! glngle !

How the sweet bells ring!
And round about the lighted Pool
We gambol^ dance^ and sing !

But who comes now ?

'Tis the Bishop in his carriage,
Whose shoulders bear the pain and pride

Of Church and State's mis-marriage :
A huge bale of lawn and purple

He heaves into the Pool,
And, nodding to his coachman,

Trips off, relieved and cool !

The Millionaire comes next,

With a loan to help a war,
On the wrong side of all justice —

And his " interest " — not so sure.
106

CHRISTMAS BOWL

He inflates — and he collapses —

His mind grows sick and dim —
Oh, the pangs of breeding money ! —
His loan flutters o'er the brim !
With gmgle ! tinkle ! gingle !
How the sweet bells ring !
As round about the lighted Pool
We gambol^ dancey and sing !

Who is this in red and gold ?

'Tis the Soldier with his sword,
And riding on a cannon —

Bedizen'd, bless'd, adored !
Round his neck he wears a chain,

For a show and a pretence,
But engraved with fiery letters

Claiming blind obedience :
His pride and bane are loosed —

They fly o'er the holly fence !

Next, a Lawyer, with his costs —

Making full a thousand pounds,
With a score of breaking hearts,

And five years of waste and wounds.
His face is cold and wretched —

His life is but a span —
A red tape-worm, at the best,

In a black coat stuff 'd with bran :
He tosses o'er his bill of costs ! —

He is quite another man !
107

THE ROUND GAME OF THE

With gingle ! tinkle ! gingle !

How the sweet bells ring !
And round about the lighted Pool

We gambol^ dancey and sing !

The Merchant brings his bargain,

Which would beggar half a town ; —
The Schemer shows a " spec,"

But deserves each good man's frown ; —
The Scholar brings his book,

Where his soul, all moulting, lies ; —
The Poet brings his laurel

And his castle in the skies ; —
The Lover brings his mistress

Who has treated him with scorn ; —
The Shepherd brings his favourite lamb,

With its curly fleece unshorn ; —
All these into the Pool

Are cast, with various smarts,
As valued Christmas Offerings,

Inspired with Christmas hearts !
While gingle ! tinkle ! gingle !

How the sweet bells ring !
And round about the lighted Pool
We gambol^ dance, and sing !

[The crowd of players at the Game, having
joined hands in this concluding dance, now
whirl round the Pool of Ice, gambolling and
singing ; and they continue to do this, till the
charm begins to work, and the heat of the
108

CHRISTMAS BOWL

Christmas hearts outside causes the Offering
which each has thrown in, to warm to such
a genial glow, that the heat thus collectively
generated, melts the ice. The Pool gradually
dissolves — the players of the game, one after
another, sink down exhausted, and fall into a
delightful reverie ; while the melted Pool over-
flows, and floats every one of them to his
home, as he seems to lie in a mother-of-pearl
boat, with a branch of holly at the prow, and
a coloured lamp amidst the green leaves
and red berries. Each one, soon after, reco-
vers his senses just enough to find himself
lying comfortably in bed, and listening to the
waits !]

THE END

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,

BREAD STREET HILL, E.G., AND

BUNGAY, SUFFOLK,

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